Pascaguala, MS, September 20, 2005 --(
PR.com)-- The death, disease, devastation and desperation toll is mounting all along Mississippi’s gulf coast. The entire state of Mississippi was engulfed by Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005. After the category five winds smashed homes and businesses, a 30 foot storm surge wall of water crashed inland, causing further death and destruction rolling in and then rolling out. Unlike parts of New Orleans drying out after the dike leak in the aftermath of Katrina, entire towns and cities have been virtually wiped off the map in Mississippi. To add further insult to injury, Mississippian’s have watched while the army, navy national guard and other federal forces fly over and roll through the state and the affected region on their way first to New Orleans, then to the Carolina’s, buying up scarce resources and leaving the Mississippian’s to fend for themselves in meeting their own most basic human needs.
Bureaucratic bumbling caused death during-the-storm (DTS) and now after-the-storm (ATS) are causing further death and fueling desperation, threatening to make an already tragic and untenable situation worse. “FEMA won’t come to us! The people of D"Iberville do not want to leave what is left of their homes, which in most cases is a slab or just a spot on the ground. FEMA wants us to leave and go elsewhere for shelter. FEMA won’t give us tents and other temporary shelter so we can house our own in what is left of our own city, so our own citizens can rebuild.” The Mayor of D’Iberville, MS recently stated on CNN.
The mayor’s comments summarize in a nutshell continuing bureaucratic turf battles that a widening an already enormous gulf between the services that affected Mississippian’s need and what they are getting. Other of the many examples are: MEMA, the American Red Cross and Harrison, Hancock and Jackson county emergency operations units are turning away doctors and other health care professionals who have been in or are arriving in Mississippi with pharmaceuticals, knowledge and staff to care for the medical needs at the point of care; in other words going to the people instead of demanding that the people come to them. Those medical personnel have developed and operated mobile medical units (caring for medical needs from private vehicles); set up medical sites in parking lots, churches, on service organizations property and even commandeered an empty unit in a section – 8 housing complex only to be stymied or closed down by local and/or county and/or state and/or federal governmental entities.
Elizabeth Gallup, MD JD MBA originally from Defiance Ohio and before that Hurricane WV, left on September first from Kansas City to provide care from her vehicle “I have ran from the navy, hid from the cops, been arrested in Biloxi and slept in a box - All just to care for any one and everyone wherever and with whatever I can give. It appears that I am embarrassing the federal, state and local authorities, so authorities react to being embarrassed by trying to silence the embarrasser. I am only one of many, many volunteers in areas not limited to medical relief that have had to fight to be allowed to or to continue to provide care.”
Even the US Navy has been stymied in their efforts to provide care in the affected area. The U.S.S Comfort was emergently deployed to the port of Pascagoula where they were anchored for 10 days. “We were told, in so many words, that we were not wanted and would not be permitted to provide care on shore. So we have a whole hospital ship filled with frustrated, highly trained medical personnel, who volunteered to be deployed with the ship and we have to sit around and play computer and card games just to pass the time. Properly deployed medical units from the ship made up of 6 personnel: a military nurse to coordinate and manage, a civilian volunteer doctor, 3 corpsmen and a security person could care for 65 to 80 patients per day with all sorts of medical issues from infections, to trauma to acute exacerbations of chronic diseases. Instead, we are just sitting here frustrated and mad at being wasted” said a Navy corpsman aboard the USS Comfort who asked not be to identified. Yesterday, September 19th, the ship left the port ostensibly because of the oncoming tropical storm, Rita.
Dr Gallup said “I thought I was just going to be a doctor and help people until I ran out of the medical supplies that I brought with me in my truck. It has ended up that to be enabled to continue to provide care, I have been forced to create a charitable foundation as a mechanism to provide organization to a system that is in chaos; a chaos that was created and is being continued by bureaucratic turf battles. I am only a family physician; but when forced to, I WILL put into action my legal and business experience if that is what it takes to get the job done!” Since arriving in Mississippi, Dr. Gallup, in between treating over 2000 people, has created Mississippi’s Forgotten and 501 c 3 charitable organization that is working to channel monetary donations directly to meet the individual needs of the individual affected Mississippian; channel medical relief supplies including setting up and deploying mobile medical units and setting up and staffing emergency medical clinics at sites that are positioned where the need is and providing medical relief ranging from prescription refills to acute medical treatment of infections and trauma; channel basic human needs assistance such as housing and food and to channel individual assistance with the understanding and navigating the bureaucratic maze of filing for FEMA and private insurance relief. She has identified out-of-state expertise and in-state Mississippians to fill the board of the foundation; individuals from all genders and races and educational levels and lives lost and needs to be met. Mississippi’s Forgotten web-site is mississippisforgotten.org
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