Sept 1

Nathalie and I are still doing OK. Cell phone and internet service is still sketchy. The stuff you're seeing on TV regarding New Orleans are true.

The helicopters and rescue boats are being shot at as they try to transport patients out of the hospitals. This has slowed down the hospital evacuations. The medical staff are using plastic bags as toilets because the hospitals have no power or running water. Combined with the heat, the stench is overpowering. Nobody is really sure when the hospital will be completely evacuated.

People are calling in radio stations giving locations of people that may be trapped in houses. These are people that didn't leave the city because they didn't have the means. It may be too late for these people due to the height of the water.

Many local residents showed up with working boats to help law enforcement transport people off of rooftops, but because of the shooting and the lack of resources to protect the volunteers, the authorities had to turn them away.

There are reports of other people with boats charging people money to ferry them off of rooftops.

The officials are quoting 2-3 months before power will be restored to the city. Nobody will be allowed back in for at least 30 days. Given the rampant shooting and flooding, I'm not real keen on getting back in anyway.

This small town I'm in has nearly run out of gasoline. Tempers are flaring as people line up for blocks trying to fill up their cars.

A man entered a nearby ER with a gun, threathening violence, seeking drugs. Due to this behavior, our ER is now staffed with armed guards.

I'm not sure where the other residents in my surgical program are. I know there are three here with me and six back at the main campus. We know the locations of a smattering of the other surgical residents, but we still cannot account for all 25 of us.

Our satellite hospital just got the power restored. We have been working without power for 4 days in 90+ degree heat. It will take about 2 days for the hospital's AC units to cool the hospital down to comfortable levels.

One of my nurse friends is still at one of the downtown New Orleans hospitals waiting to be evacuated. She says all of the patients have been evacuated, and only the medical staff remain.

There is such a lack of resources, that many of the patients were placed on plywood boards and brought up to the top deck of the parking lot, waiting for the Blackhawk helicopters to airlift them to ambulances waiting on the ground. A brief medical history was written on a sheet of paper so that the receiving physicians could continue their medical care and placed into a plastic bag to keep it dry. The nurses would "handbag" the intubated, ventilator dependent patients with portable oxygen. When that patient would die while waiting for the helicopters, they would simply disconnect the oxygen and move on to the next intubated patient. She wouldn't say how many people they lost because the helicopters were driven away by the shooters on the ground.