State of Art Mobile Hospital from UNC Turned Away

[OneBlueSky]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/5/171122/0018

"We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here," said one of the frustrated surgeons, Dr. Preston "Chip" Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That government officials can't straighten out the mess and get them assigned to a relief effort now that they're just a few miles away "is just mind-boggling," he said in a phone interview.

Next door in Mississippi, the North Carolina mobile hospital waiting to help also offered impressive state-of-the-art medical care.

It was developed with millions of tax dollars through the Office of Homeland Security after 9-11. With capacity for 113 beds, it is designed to handle disasters and mass casualties.

Equipment includes ultrasound, digital radiology, satellite Internet, and a full pharmacy, enabling doctors to do most types of surgery in the field, including open-chest and abdominal operations

- more . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/5/171122/0018

[sandnsea]

1. Slap "Walmart" On The Front

Then it'll get through.

Corporatization of Katrina

These reports have come out for days, all kinds of individuals turned away, first responders told not to “self-dispatch”, Red Cross turned away. And it continues. After days of reports that rescuers were to arrive in New Orleans, the Dept of Homeland Security appears to have chosen to turn the operation over to corporate America.

On Sept 2, “The Department of Homeland Security, the Air Transport Association and the Department of Transportation today announced that the airline industry has launched “Operation Air Care” to provide emergency airlift to more than 25,000 New Orleans residents stranded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina .”

Walmart has provided 100 trailer loads of water and merchandise to shelters and relief organizations. They have also offered free prescriptions, even if people do not have a copy of their prescription. Pepsico, Culligan and Anheuser-Busch have donated water, walkie-talkie phones have been donated by Nextel, phone cards by Qwest, trucks and tankers by International Truck, amongst others.

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?view=plink&id=1346

[tuckessee]

2. This is beyond simple bureaucratic incompetence.

How many reported incidences have there been like this??? It boggles the mind.