NEW ORLEANS | Medical specialists from Wright-Patterson Air Force feel like they are fighting a new war here.
But instead of wounded troops, frail elderly people fill the stretchers, sometimes stacked four high, inside the 445th Airlift Wing transport jets that are flying daily missions to the Gulf Coast to evacuate medical patients from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
Even the most seasoned medics have trouble absorbing what they find here, where patients lie on stretchers inside the terminal while throngs of bedraggled storm victims outside wait for help amid piles of garbage.
"I've never seen anything like this," Senior Master Sgt. Terry Kennedy, said Saturday inside a noisy C-141 transport jet as it touched down in New Orleans.
An Air Force Reservist with 26 years of service, Kennedy is an aeromedical evacuation technician who saw duty in both Persian Gulf wars. Saturday's mission was her second to New Orleans.
Kennedy said she's used to planeloads of young men with battle wounds. She isn't used to racks of litters filled with elderly people, some dressed in nothing but diapers and paper gowns.
"You want to wash them and bathe them and take care of them, and there's nothing you can do," she said.
"We can't give medicine to these patients because we don't know ... the medical history or anything about these people.
"When they cry, it just breaks your heart." [Read more - Dayton Daily News]
A helicopter unloads evacuaees from Hurricane Katrina at New Orleans International Airport on Saturday. A C-141 crew and medics from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base flew two planeloads of medical patients from the airport to Nashville and Tampa on Saturday. Photo by Timothy R. Gaffney, Dayton Daily News
Unidentified relief workers wheel medical patients to an awaiting airplane saturday at New Orleans International Airport. Military and commercial airplanes are evacuating victims of Hurricane Katrina. The 445th Airlift Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has been flying daily evacuation missions to New Orleans. Photo by Timothy R. Gaffney, Dayton Daily News
Relief workers at New Orleans International Airport carry patients on litters into a C-141 transport plane from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The 445th Airlift Wing is flying daily medical evacuation missions as part of a massive military hurricane relief effort. Photo by Timothy R. Gaffney, Dayton Daily News
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God! I can't imagine my grandfather having to endure this mess. He's lived a life of dignity, and to be reduced to this at the end of it - it's horrifying to consider.
Posted by: Michelle | September 05, 2005 at 10:29 PM