Since their initial deployment to Louisiana on Aug. 21, three Brown Emergency Medical Technicians, through their affiliation with the Rhode Island-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team, have worked to provide continuing relief to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The three full-time Emergency Medical Services employees, part of a nationwide network of volunteer relief personnel, have left Brown for between two and four weeks, and may choose to remain in the Gulf Coast region longer.
"I don't think there's any federal agency that could deal with the scope of the disaster in multiple states. We've learned the lesson that there are even disasters that are too big," said Mark Palla. Supervisor of Brown EMS and logistics chief of RI-1 DMAT, Palla was deployed with the first of Rhode Island's teams. "It really bothers me that people say that FEMA didn't have a good response," he said.
RI-1 DMAT is part of a national network of volunteer-based health providers that fall under the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Under provisions in their mandate, DMATs function like the National Guard - employers are obligated to release their workers whenever the agency asks for deployment. Deployment, which is completely voluntary, lasts for a minimum of two weeks and includes licensed doctors, nurses and pharmacists, as well as logistics personnel.
Palla was stationed at the Superdome in New Orleans along with Anthony Fusco, another Brown EMT supervisor and the supply management officer for RI-1 DMAT, and Anne Barylick '03 after other teams asked for more secure assignments. In spite of the potential security threats, Palla said he never felt endangered. The team of 35 was protected by 16 dedicated Homeland Security members on the inside of the field hospitals and by 1,000 National Guardsmen on the perimeters.
As one team prepares to leave the Gulf region today, the headquarters is in the process of compiling a new roster, according to Tom Lawrence, the Deputy Commander for RI-1 DMAT. Teams can be ready for deployment within 72 hours of receiving commands from the national headquarters in Bethesda, Md.
In many ways, the hardest parts of the Rhode Island team's mission in Louisiana were related to issues of the physical conditions surrounding the site, Palla said. Temperatures ranged daily from the high 90s to the low 100s and the entire facility was without running water and power. Although communications systems were in place after the first couple of days, other basic necessities were absent. One of the biggest problems was the disposal of human waste, and one of the routine tasks became "walking around with a mop and bucket and cleaning up after people left the waiting room," Palla said.
Although all three Brown EMTs flew back to Providence Sept. 4, both Fusco and Barylick returned to the Gulf Coast on RI-1 DMAT's current mission in Lafayette, La., where the team is responsible for triaging the overflow of people in the emergency room to make space for the refugees in the Cajun Dome. These people are healthy for the most part, but the 900 residents have the "same medical needs as any other population," according to Lawrence. While it is still unclear at this point, Lawrence suspects that RI-1 DMAT will be in the Gulf Area through "at least the end of the year."
During the worst phase of disaster cleanup, military presence was essential both for maintaining order and for serving as a liaison between the team and the 25,000 people who remained in the Superdome. Patients were often brought in through the military, and anyone who was hostile was searched before being allowed into the facilities. Overall, however, "people were very happy to see us. They were thankful. The military had most of the work, there were certainly crimes committed, but we didn't see that. (Our security forces) weren't going to let anything happen to us," Palla said.
Treatments at the field hospitals in August helped hundreds patients a day and dealt with illness ranging from the common cold to malnutrition and gunshot wounds. Many of those treated were elderly who came to get prescriptions filled at the DMAT pharmacy. For the most part, patients were only in the field hospitals for about an hour - they were quickly either taken by helicopter to the main treatment facility at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, La., or given prescription drugs and sent back to the Superdome.
The volunteers themselves lived with many of the problems faced by their patients. Most survived on only sporadic sleep, ate military-supplemented food that was being shipped into the Superdome by the truckload at the height of the disaster, and some even got sick. One member of the team had to be removed from the site and hospitalized for two days.
The massive number of patients limited personal interactions with team members, but Palla shared one story in which a 6-year-old boy came into the clinic with a 30- or 40-year-old man, whom the staff assumed to be his father. Eventually, it became clear that the boy's parents were not in the Superdome at all, and that the man was a family friend who had decided to make the boy's care his priority.
"This was just such a touching moment," Palla said. "You actually saw the good. It was an example of the community coming together and taking someone under its wings."
