Thursday, June 01, 2006

Hurricane Season

To my fellow East and Gulf coasters today marks the day. The day we start hold our breaths and hope upon hope that Mother Nature will be kind. They come to our coasts with names like Katrina, Andrew, and Hugo. They huff and puff and blow our houses down. They flood our homes. They turn our interstates into parking lots. From one Emergency Worker to the people of my east coast city that I care for...leave when they tell you to leave. We cannot save you. I can tell you right now when the winds come we no longer run ambulances, fire trucks and police cars. The ambulances get sent to higher ground. Our supplies get locked up in a waterproof building. Our dispatch center gets shut down, so we have no radio contact. We hunker down, batten the hatches and ride out the storm. The local ERs close the doors. When I worked in the local Trauma Center, before they renovated it there was a line on the wall next to "The Board" . It was about three/four feet up. It was the "Water Line" from Hugo. There were stories from some of the RNs that spent the night in the satirwell feeling the building sway from the wind. So when they say leave, LEAVE.

We will not come. We are not there.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good advice from someone who knows wht she's talking about. I hope a few people will listen.

No

Anonymous said...

Wow. That's eerie...Glad I live in Oregon! But the forest fires can be intense, and one year (was it 2001? 2002?) it got so smoky - for WEEKS - I got wheezy and there were absolutely no inhalers in the local stores! Some people I work with got evacuated becasue they had rural properties near the fires. Yes, Mother Nature is pretty intense!

painter in hiding said...

Yeah she can be. and I don't think people really understand. They watch everything on TV, but understand? I watched the fires on CNN...But I can't understand it. Hurricanes, Hurricanes i get. Katrina has taught us somethings, but every city is diffrent. Just get out leave...they released 911 tapes from Florida during Hurricane wilma. People screaming hollering. It donesn't just make the people feel helpless, but it makes us, the emergency responders helpless, because thats our job, what we are trained to do. and we can't get to them.