Maine unit sees Katrina’s worst Storm’s eye hit Mississippi town now served by Guard medical group

WAVELAND, Miss. – To the Maine Air National Guard troops rendering much needed medical aid in this small coastal city, one thing is clear: The structural devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina here does not compare to that of New Orleans.

It’s worse.

In Louisiana, homes and businesses are flooded. Here, they are gone. In the New Orleans, it will take years to rebuild. In Waveland, the residents will start from scratch.

Hurricane Katrina may have ripped a path of destruction through New Orleans unlike anything the city has ever seen, but she aimed for Waveland. This town, once home to roughly 8,000 people, is where the eye of the storm crossed.

Brian Mollere has lived on the same street here for 50 years. His house is gone and he’s now living under a tented tarpaulin with his Chihuahua, Rocky, across the street from where the courthouse and city hall used to be.

“It’s not home anymore,” Mollere said Sunday after receiving supplies from Maine National Guard Lt. Col. Chip Ridky, who has checked on Mollere periodically since arriving in Waveland two weeks ago.

Ridky is serving with 10 other members of the 101st Medical Group, who arrived two weeks ago to help run a temporary hospital while the county hospital, Hancock Medical Center, remains under repair after being surrounded by 26 feet of water.

Members of the group left town briefly this week to wait out Hurricane Rita in nearby Lumberton, but returned Friday to their sandbagged tent network, which houses a pharmacy, emergency room, dental center and even a waiting room.

The Maine Guard group, composed of medics, doctors, nurses and public health experts, is serving with units from all over the country to care for up to 70 emergency room patients per day. Many are injured from performing recovery work, suffering with skin rashes from contaminated water, or elderly and ill from lack of medication, Lt. Col. Rich Leidinger of Rockport said Sunday as troops swept the tents’ hallways and restocked supplies.

The team even helped to deliver a baby girl to a woman who was just minutes from giving birth when she arrived, Staff Sgt. Natalie Davis of Bangor said Sunday, standing on a wooden boardwalk that connects the tent network.

The woman was too late to receive pain medication, but had at least experienced labor with her five other children, Davis said.

“Both the baby and the mom were good. We told her she should name her Katrina,” as a joke, she said.

Beyond treating the pregnant, sick and injured, the team also has worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to evaluate sites for long-term housing, Ridky said. FEMA changed the proposed location of a trailer for one area family after Ridky pointed out several areas of concern, he said.

“There’s raw sewage in the road still, there’s debris, not to mention the psychological problems,” Ridky said, his forehead dripping with sweat in the humid weather. “On the second floor, they looked out the window and watched their neighbors drown.”

Command Chief Master Sgt. Curtis Davis, a bioenvironmentalist, tests the on-site water daily to check for bacteria such as E. coli, though everyone still drinks bottled water, Ridky said.

“Even if you brush your teeth, there can be enough bacteria in there to hurt you,” he said. Some members of the team have traveled off the site to render aid, even delivering military field showers to a nearby shelter.

“They hadn’t had a shower in two weeks, some of these people,” he said.

One regular duty is tossing larvicide into standing water to cut down on the mosquito population, which has been known in the area to carry West Nile virus, Ridky said. He brought one box of the larvicide, which when packaged looks like small, gray doughnuts, to Mollere under the torn tarp the Waveland native now lives beneath.

Mollere, having survived Hurricane Camille in 1969, stayed in his home during the storm until the downstairs walls blew in and a giant wave carried him and Rocky away, he said. His mother, staying with Mollere’s sister in a neighboring town, drowned, he said.

“They told me the water was rising and she just didn’t have the will to go,” he said, standing across the street from a mosaic mural that portrays the town during a Mardi Gras celebration.

He pointed to a piece of glass that depicts where his house once stood, too weary now to marvel at how his beloved town has disappeared into a pile of rubble and debris. The Maine National Guard’s checks on Mollere will stop in two weeks after the Medical Group is sent home, though they are sure to remember the now homeless man and his town. Ridky, who served for four months last year in the war-torn desert overseas, said the experience has marked him.

“It’s impacted me more than Iraq did,” he said, driving away in a Humvee to return to his team.