Before the bad news, for those that do not know, I am a pilot working for Acadian Ambulance....I've been sitting in my airplane from sunrise to sunset since saturday morning....no matter what we do, when we finish, there's still more waiting for us. I know I'm helping, but our job is so huge, it is starting to feel like we're not even making a dent in the task facing us.
I've been over New Orleans, hammond, sildel, gulfport and the rest of the gulf coast all the way to mobile many many times in the last few days.....I do not want to tell ya'll this, but in my opinion, it's MUCH worse than what you have been seeing on TV. Besides the water, New Orleans is lucky in a way because it's still there. The gulf coast has NOTHING AT ALL. In MS, from the coast to about 1/2 mile inland has been scoured clean. Farther inland, I'd speculate to say that only 2 out of every 3 building are still standing but all have damage <probably optomistic on my part>. Pictures or eyewittness descriptions cannot properly or accurately convey the scope of the destruction of these areas.
I flew some doctors and 1,000lbs of food and water into gulfport/pascagoula yesterday and took a full load of newly homeless people out. Twice. Quite honestly, the best way to describe my feelings was that I flew from Lafayette directly to the stone age. It was like going to another country, a "third world" country, immediately after a war. If it werent' for the airport, I'd recoginzed nothing. Everyone here has changed in some way. Every pilot <hundreds of them here in LFT & even more in BTR from what I've heard> I've been around is just like me. We're walking around in a daze, and trying to do more than we can. I'm even seeing the "thousand yard stare" in some of them. We're turning into robots. Get a job, do it, get the next one with no end in sight.....The reality of all this just hit me yesterday. Someone noticed it and today, I'm "under house arrest." My supervisor has confined me to my house for at least 16hours to get catch up on some rest that I've missed and refused to get since saturday.
I wish with every fibre of my being that I had a few hundred million $$ lying around so I could fund the red cross relief effort. I wish I could take into my home many more people than the one displaced family that I currently share my home with. I wish I could do more. I wish I could see that the efforts of myself and my co-workers are making an immediate difference.
It's going to be a long time before ya'll in New Orleans are even beginning to get back to something resembling normal. Our hearts and prayers go out to you. While I do not believe there's anything I can do to help anyone individually, please ask anyway if you feel in need. Perhaps my best piece of advice I can give to anyone that is a former New Orleans citizen is to find a job. Find a job now and consider where ever you are home. It's going to be a long time before anyone goes back to that city. Bob has the right idea IMO. You can't wait. It's important to understand the reality of the situation and accept it. If you dont' have a substancial savings, find a paying job ASAP so you can provide for yourself and your family. Keep them dry, clothed and fed and work for the future.
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