www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/7/164747/4155
Democrats Table I thought you would be interested in this account of a team of people led by Greg Simon, President FasterCures & Al Gore to airlift patients from Charity hospital during the first days following Katrina.
FasterCures On September 3<sup>rd</sup> and 4<sup>th</sup>, FasterCures worked with a small dedicated group of people to airlift approximately 270 medical pa tients and evacuees from the New Orleans airport to hospitals and shelte rs in Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee. On Thursday, September 1<sup>st</sup>, my friend Jill Chozen of San Franc isco called to ask if I could put someone in touch with Al Gore. Da vid Kline, the father in law of Jills friend Denise Kline, was stranded in Charity hospital in New Orleans. The situation was dire and becomin g worse by the minute food and water running out, no power, four feet of water surrounding the hospital and alligators eating corpses outside. David is a neurosurgeon and needed to take his patients out of the hos pital as soon as possible. David asked Denise to find Al Gore for help because David knew Gore from operating on Gores son after a life threat ening auto accident nearly 16 years ago. I emailed Gore with Denise Klines number after speaking to Jill and got an answer immediately. Gore had phoned David in the hospital several ti mes and ascertained that he was now on the way to an Apache Helicopter l anding site with his patients. The next day, Friday September 2<sup>nd</sup>, I heard an NPR story that things were getting worse at Charity hospital they were actually takin g in more patients because the other nearby hospital Tulanewas closed. When I arrived at work, I knew what we had to do we had to evacuate m edical patients from Charity to safety. My first idea was to find helicopters, trucks, planes and a hospital. I called a friend at FedEx but their planes are not good for carrying peop le. I called my friend Steve Davison who charters planes for a living he felt he could help. I called Skila Harris, former Chief of Staff to Tipper Gore and a director of TVA. TVA had trucks going to New Orleans with water that might be good for evacuating the patients on their retu rn trips. Meanwhile, Catherine Berger at FasterCures had contacted Charity Hospital and was told that most of the patients had now been evacuated to the ai rport field hospital but were still in dire straits. Skila reported tha t the Coast Guard had helicopters that could help but need coordinates f or landing. She also reported that the University of Tennessee hospital system might be willing to take the patients under the supervision of t he Tennessee Emergency Management Agency. FasterCures would have to be prepared to sign cont racts that day. I emailed Gore and asked for his help in raising the money. He committ ed to paying for the planes and urged us to move forward. Dar LaFon, USAF Retd, who serv ed in Somalia and ran the military hospital in Baghdad after the invasio n He was board certified in Altitude Physiology and Internal Medicine . At this point Catherine Berger pulled up a story from the DOD saying they had two medical teams evacuating people from the hospitals and the airp ort and that the ship COMFORT was sailing to New Orleans from Baltimore. That did not sound like it was going to help that many people for at l east another day or two. Skila confirmed that TEMA would find hospitals for the patients. TEMA required a FEMA Mission Assignment tha t would follow the patients and allow the funding for those patients to follow them into whatever hospital they ended up in. Bredesen of Te nnessee who put us in touch with the Tennessee FEMA people. After a bri ef interval, Jim Bassham and Eddie Boatwright of the Tennessee FEMA offi ce reported back that all was clear and the TEMA people could carry out the relocation in Tennessee. Meanwhile, back at my day job at FasterCures, Larry Flax, founder of Cali fornia Pizza Kitchens, called me to discuss his involvement with us. Af ter I explained what we were doing that day, he pledged to pay for one p lane with money CPK had raised for New Orleans. Also, Martin Craig call ed from Chicago to report on his recent successful prostate cancer surge ry. He agreed to locate hospitals in Chicago who would take patients. We were now desperate to find a contact on the ground at the New Orleans airport to help triage ambulatory medical patients into these planes. We spoke to the aide to one of th e deputies at FEMA and was told they did not need or want our help since the hospital evacuation was going fine. We looked at the reports from CNN about the conditions at the field hospital at the airport and discou nted that opinion immediately. Around 5 pm, we called Howard Zucker, Deputy Assistant Secretary of HHS. He put us in touch with the Public Health Emergency Preparedness office . Lieutenant Commander (LCMDR) Dunaway reported she was discussing our offer of help with her superiors within the hour and would get back to u s We did not hear again until nearly midnight, when she called to say she was going off shift and gave us a number to call at the HHS command center in Washington. Around 8 pm this was the situation: We had planes for two flights at lea st. We had hospitals in Tennessee and Chicago for 290 and 200 patients respectively. We needed landing slot s at the airport and patients for the planes. Gore called Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta and obtained two land ing slots for Saturday. I contacted Casey Decker at the HHS Command Center, a highly a dvanced, high tech center for tracking and dealing with public health cr ises of all kinds. I asked Decker for help contacting TRANSCOM, which w as running operations at the airport, as well as a medical coordinator o n the ground. Decker explained they had not been able to maintain commu nications with TRANSCOM on the ground or the medical staff. It was now after midnight early Saturday September 4<sup>th</sup>. I was home with my laptop and phone and blackberry spread out around me on my bed. My wife, wisely, chose to sleep in the guest bedroom to avoid the phone calls. Starting right after midnight I began receiving calls from FEMA, HHS, TRA NSCOM and other groups whose acronyms I still cannot explain. LCDR Kenn edy from FEMA called to understand what I was trying to do. Fifteen minutes later Mimi Riley, Deputy Director from NDMS called to beg me in a plaintive and exhausted voice not to carry out this mission. She had many reasons you need doctors on the plane, Chicago is too f ar from their home, how will we track the patients, this is a military o peration and we were not military. I explained to her that we had two doctors on the plane one of whom was a retired Air Force Doctor who had run the military hospital in Baghdad a fter the invasion. I thought we could trust him to run an airplane of p eople from New Orleans to Knoxville. We were working with NDMS hospital s in Tennessee and Chicago so they would have a good tracking system. Many people from New Orleans are more at home in Chic ago than Houston. She tried t o sound grateful for our intentions but she was not going to have outsid ers help. I even offered to GIVE her the planes and the crews and the h ospitals and let her run it through her NDMS system but she would have n one of it. She asked me at least to delay until noon the next day and I said I would try. He was planning to leave for Dallas at 4 am to mee t the plane. Its too late, the doctors are flying in here to fly w ith Al to Dallas. What if something went wrong with a patient on the plane? What if the military did not cooperate on the ground and no pati ents got on the plane? LaFon could handle th e patients and Al would trust that when they landed they would break thr ough the resistance and succeed. I called Mimi back and said we could not delay but we would agree not to fly to Chicago. Over the next three hours (from 2am to 5 am) I was called by an array of Majors and Lieutenant Commanders telling me to stop. I never mentioned Gores name because no one ever asked me who was paying for the flights or how we had come so far. Finally at 5 am Major Lindquist said if we ...
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