Well, last night at work I found out that those people who will be allowed to go down south as part of the disaster relief effort will be going to Biloxi, rather than New Orleans. Only the police officers will be sent to Louisiana. All of the medical staff will be sent to the Biloxi VA to relieve staff there. The VA in Biloxi is one of two hospitals left standing and operating on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. They are not only treating military veterans now; they are treating as many people as they can squeeze in. The staff is seeing many times the normal amount of patients they usually see, are exhausted beyond words, and are facing their own personal tragedies of lost homes and family members.

The people who have been approved to go (primarily nurses thus far) will have to get immunizations as if they would be traveling the most medically impaired of third world countries. There is a serious threat of water bourne diseases, epidemics really. The people will be going for three weeks at a time and will be travelling together via bus. You cannot take your own vehicle down there  -- there is precious little fuel, and it is being reserved for rescue vehicles, busses, etc. You will be expected to work some serious hours (12 or more) every day for the first two weeks you are down there. For your third week, the next "wave" of volunteers will have arrived, and you would only help out a bit, and would be expected to rest enough so as to return to your permanent duty station in good enough shape to return to your work.

Texas has something like 250,000 evacuees, that the state is housing, feeding, clothing, and providing medical care for. They cannot take on any more people, as their resources will be spread too thin. So we are expecting somewhere around 10,000 people to be flown up to the Battle Creek area here in Michigan, where they will be housed in the barracks of an old National Guard base which was recently closed. They might need medical teams to travel to Battle Creek to help take care of those people, too. So if they do not let me got to Biloxi (and all of my coworkers laughed at me when I said I was ready to go -- they said I would never be allowed to go down there because of my asthma) -- maybe they will let me go to Battle Creek. Since it is only a two hour drive from home (not to mention the fact that there is power, phones, and running water), I could possibly even see (or at least talk to) my childrenwhile I would be posted there.