BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. (ABP) — For residents of this coastal town devastated by Hurricane Katrina, seeing their hospital disabled by the storm only added to their desperation. So when Ed Tate and other disaster-relief workers set up a makeshift emergency room in the hospital parking lot, it was a welcome sight in Bay St. Louis.
“When we roll in somewhere, we can set up for medical treatment in about an hour,” Tate explained Sept. 8, one week after setting up shop outside of Hancock Medical Center.
Tate, a 64-year-old pharmacist and member of First Baptist Church of Pensacola, is a volunteer with Florida DMAT -1 — a disaster medical assistance team. A DMAT team, Tate explained, functions like a mobile emergency room, patching up injuries and stabilizing more serious patients but not performing surgery.
“We fix the holes in them. We don't put any more in there,” explained Tate, who normally works at Lakeview Center, a mental-health facility that is part of Baptist Health Care in Pensacola.
As a DMAT volunteer, Tate responds to emergencies when called by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. His Florida unit was joined by other disaster workers from Iowa and Missouri to set up the medical facility in Bay St. Louis.
Employees of Hancock Medical Center kept the hospital working during Katrina's 150-mph winds, but the facility was damaged and contaminated by the storm surge. For now, hospital employees and disaster-relief teams are working together to meet medical needs of the surrounding communities, which include Waveland and Pass Christian, two of the hardest-hit.
“We do what we can for them,” Tate said. “Most of our doctors are E.R. docs. It's like walking into an emergency room.”
The unit saw about 300 patients a day during its first week on the scene, encountering mostly non-life-threatening injuries.
“A lot of cuts and punctures,” Tate summarized. “And this stuff they've been wading around in is really eating their skin,” he said, referring to the Mississippi's less-deadly version of New Orleans' “toxic soup,” composed of seawater, mud, chemicals and worse. As a result, the DMAT doctors are treating a lot of dermatitis and other “dermatologic stuff,” Tate said.
Most patients are walk-ins, some who obviously delayed treatment — or couldn't find any — in the first days after the storm. But a fleet of 15 ambulances is bringing in others rescued from their homes.
Patients with serious injuries are evacuated by helicopter ambulance to hospitals in Jackson.
“It's amazing that they lived [through the storm],” Tate said. “We're finding some now three or four feet deep in the mud.”
Like most of the hospitals in the area, as well as doctors' offices, Hancock Medical Center will remain closed for several weeks. In the meantime, DMAT is the primary source of medical care for area residents. Even those who survived the hurricane unharmed have medical needs, like replacing hard-to-acquire prescriptions and managing chronic conditions.
And not all the injuries are physical, Tate noted. People traumatized by the hurricane and aftermath are offered counseling by mental-health professionals. “We have a lot of counseling done on site … because there's a lot of despair down here.”
“The most overwhelming thing [he's observed] are the people who have lost everything,” Tate said. Katrina, one of the worst hurricanes ever to hit the United States, totally leveled many homes, leaving only a pile of rubble or in some cases a concrete slab swept clean. “They just don't have anything.”
Tate hears stories from rescuers, but his perspective on the damage is admittedly limited. “We haven't been out [of the medical compound] since we got to this spot,” he said.
He heard about lawlessness in New Orleans. And even along the Mississippi coast there were reports of supplies being stolen from working hospitals. But Tate, who left his wife and daughter at home in Spanish Fort, Ala., near Pensacola, said he hasn't felt threatened.
“I would be worried if I were going to New Orleans,” he said, “but if they thought we were in danger, they would pull us out.”
Tate's unit is expected to remain in the area for a total of three weeks.
They haven't lacked for food but perhaps for variety. It's been mostly military MREs — meals ready to eat.
“We're supposed to have a hotdog party,” he said by telephone Sept. 8. “It's going to be a meal fit for a king.”
Despite the hardships, heartache and difficult working conditions, Tate said he has no intention of quitting his volunteer DMAT position. Whenever he takes a new civilian job, he tells the employer, “I'm coming to work for you, but if they call me, I'm gone.”
“It's a passion with me,” he said of his disaster-response role. He started with a hurricane in the Caribbean in 1994. Last year he worked after hurricanes Charlie and Jeanne, both of which hit Florida.
“I'm going to do this till I drop,” he promised. “If the hurricanes keep coming, we'll keep doing what we're doing.”
— Photo available from Associated Baptist Press