Hurricane Katrina and the disabled
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Hurricane Katrina and the disabled
byrd45 Tue Jan 13, 2009 11:27 am
RSD In the News : Hurricane Katrina and the disabled
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From: byrd45 (Original Message) Sent: 9/2/2005 4:22 PM
>From Star News Services:
Along the highway, Aleck Scallan, 63, sat in his wheelchair.
A group of police officers in a boat had rescued him from his home, which quickly flooded Tuesday morning, and dropped him off on the interstate on-ramp.
Then, they left. Scallan was left with a frail, elderly companion on a stretch of highway that fell below two giant humps, leaving them in the valley of the concrete slopes.
Where am I going to go? he said. They were supposed to pick us up and take us to the dome.
------------------------------------------------------
>From AP reports:
Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.
"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair.
"You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people," he added. "You can go overseas with the military, but you can't get them down here."
---------------------------------------------------------
>From Reuters:
Elderly people in wheelchairs tried to make their way through flooded streets in search of help, and entire families were trapped on elevated highways without water in sweltering heat.
"We want help," people chanted at the city's convention center, where thousands of evacuees were told to seek shelter when Katrina pounded the U.S. Gulf Coast on Monday, only to find woefully inadequate supplies of food or water.
Several corpses lay in nearby streets. The body of one elderly woman was abandoned in her wheelchair, covered with just a blanket.
------------------------------------------------
>From the New York Times News Service:
Another concern, Dr. Irwin Redlener said, is that people may have lost or become separated from the drugs they rely on daily for diabetes, heart disease and other chronic ailments. Pharmacies in the affected areas may have insufficient stocks of vital drugs like insulin for diabetics, creating a need to organize efforts to import and distribute essential medicines in the area. The shortage could go on for months, Redlener said.
Many people who stayed in affected areas probably had disabilities that prevented them from leaving before the hurricane, Redlener said.
-------------------------------------------------
>From Newhouse News Service:
There were people in wheelchairs, people in hospital gowns, people still strapped to gurneys with IVs in their arms. There were amputees, blind people, mentally ill people.
They were people who thought they might not make it.
Albert Hall was one of them. He's got a prosthetic leg and uses a wheelchair. He said as the water rose to the second floor of his 350-unit apartment building, others were able to get up on the roof of the building.
"I couldn't get on the roof with this thing," he said, pointing to his prosthesis. "So I stayed on the balcony. I kept hollering and hollering 'Help, help!' every time a boat came near, but no one could hear me. I was down and crazy with hollering. It was awful. I really thought I was done for."
By the time a police boat picked him up, he was nearly out of insulin.
So was Irene Williams, another one of the evacuees. Diabetes has left her with poor circulation that makes it difficult to walk. And driving wasn't an option for her and her sister.
"We would have liked to go, but we didn't have the funds to go," Williams said. "We're used to storms, though. So we thought we could ride it out."
------------------------------------------------
>From Cox News Service:
Alone in her one-bedroom house, Fluffy Sparks sat in her wheelchair and did the only thing she could think of when Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters rushed into her home: she prayed.
"I prayed like I've never prayed in all my life," said Sparks, 46.
Unable to leave, she sat terrified as the water slowly rose past her ankles, up her shoulders and finally to her chin.
"I told God, 'I can't believe you're ready for me now. Don't let me die in this water here by myself.'"
Sparks managed to haul herself onto her small kitchen table.
Miraculously, the water stopped rising just as it reached the table's top.
"I'm breathing," she said Tuesday morning, sweating in a mud-stained gown while watching a parade of people wading and passing by in small fishing boats on Fremaux Street, which was covered by thigh-deep, but receding, waters. "It was horrible, and it's still horrible, but I'm breathing."
Sparks' terrifying story is just one of hundreds, possibly thousands, that will be shared for generations in Katrina's aftermath.
------------------------------------------------
>From the Globe and Mail:
"Help!" was the plea from a person in a wheelchair in New Orleans that flashed mid-storm on the BlackBerry of Mark Smith of the Louisiana office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. "There's nothing we can do for this person right now," he said.
--------------------------------------------------
>From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Adrian Ory, 57, arrived in Houston today with her deaf daughter, Adrian Munguia, 39, and her 10-year-old granddaughter, Angel, who uses a wheelchair that had to be left behind in New Orelans. Angel was lying on a cot under a blanket.
Ory and Munguia live in different apartments near Legion Field in New Orleans, but they were together when the water started rising.
Munguia hadnt wanted to leave.
She didnt think it would do all this, and I didnt think it would either.
So I stayed with her, Ory said.
That wind started cutting up. It was blowing and blowing. Man, that water started rising you couldnt see no cars. I opened the front door and it was right up to here, she said, holding her hand chest-high.
I saw bodies floating by, dogs on top of roofs, dogs swimming.
As the water kept rising, the family escaped to a second-floor hallway, where they shouted for help out of a window and waved towels to attract attention. Eventually they were rescued by a National Guard boat.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Ward, Founder and President
ADA Watch/National Coalition for Disability Rights
1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20004
Voice: 202-415-4753
Email: jim4ward@aol.com
Visit Our Website: www.adawatch.org
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEWS RELEASE
NCD #05496
September 2, 2005
Contact: Mark S. Quigley
202-272-2004
202-272-2074 TTY
National Council on Disability Calls for Federal Disability
Recovery Plan in Response to Hurricane Katrina
WASHINGTONThe National Council on Disability (NCD) expresses its deep concern for the tremendous loss of life and devastation caused in the southern part of the United States by Hurricane Katrina and urges the Federal Government to craft a strong coordinated Federal Disability Recovery Plan for the victims and survivors of the hurricane.
According to NCD chairperson Lex Frieden, Current data indicates that people with disabilities are now most at risk in this situationand will need recovery assistance for months or years. A disproportionate number of the Hurricane survivors are people with disabilities whose needs for basic necessities are compounded by chronic health conditions and functional impairments. Relief agencies must prioritize efforts and take special steps to address the unique and complex needs of this population.
NCDs 2005 report titled Saving Lives: Including People with Disabilities in Emergency Planning
(http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/2005/publications.htm)
recommends immediate federal changes in emergency planning for people with disabilities. NCD encourages Hurricane Katrina responders to follow the findings and recommendations in this timely report.
Saving Lives: Including People with Disabilities in Emergency Planning, NCDs 2005 report, provides an overview of steps the Federal Government should take to build a solid and resilient infrastructure that will enable the government to include the diverse populations of people with disabilities in emergency preparedness, disaster relief, and homeland security programs. This infrastructure would incorporate access to technology, physical plants, programs, and communications. It also would include procurement and emergency programs and services.
NCD commends the Administration and those in leadership positions for the issuance of the July 22, 2004, Executive Order on people with disabilities and emergency preparedness. In addition, NCD acknowledges the work of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in their efforts to ensure that Americans with disabilities are included in the developing infrastructure.
All too often in emergency situations the legitimate concerns of people with disabilities are overlooked or swept aside. In areas ranging from the accessibility of emergency information to the evacuation plans for high-rise buildings, great urgency surrounds the need for responding to the concerns of people with disabilities in all planning, preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation activities. The homeland security terrorist event of September 11, 2001, as well as the recent energy blackouts in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest and, more recently, the natural disaster hurricane events in Florida, the tsunami event of 2004, and this most recent event, Hurricane Katrina, underscore the need to pay attention to the concerns raised in this report, Frieden said.
The decisions the Federal Government makes, the priority it accords to civil rights, and the methods it adopts to ensure uniformity in the ways agencies handle their disability-related responsibilities are likely to be established in the early days of an emergency situation and be difficult to change if not set on the right course at the outset. By way of this report, NCD offers advice to assist the Federal Government in establishing policies and practices in these areas. This report provides examples of community efforts with respect to people with disabilities, but by no means does it provide a comprehensive treatment of the emergency preparedness, disaster relief, or homeland security program efforts by state and local governments.
Please visit https://disasterhelp.gov/portal/jhtml/index.jhtml, the Federal Governments Web portal for disaster information and help.
For more information, contact Mark Quigley at 202-272-2008.
Mark S. Quigley
Director of Communications
National Council on Disability
1331 F Street, NW, Suite 850
Washington, DC 20004
202-272-2008
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Peace, everyone at American RSDHope
www.RSDHope.org
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Prev Discussion Next Discussion Delete
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From: byrd45 (Original Message) Sent: 9/2/2005 4:22 PM
>From Star News Services:
Along the highway, Aleck Scallan, 63, sat in his wheelchair.
A group of police officers in a boat had rescued him from his home, which quickly flooded Tuesday morning, and dropped him off on the interstate on-ramp.
Then, they left. Scallan was left with a frail, elderly companion on a stretch of highway that fell below two giant humps, leaving them in the valley of the concrete slopes.
Where am I going to go? he said. They were supposed to pick us up and take us to the dome.
------------------------------------------------------
>From AP reports:
Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.
"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair.
"You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people," he added. "You can go overseas with the military, but you can't get them down here."
---------------------------------------------------------
>From Reuters:
Elderly people in wheelchairs tried to make their way through flooded streets in search of help, and entire families were trapped on elevated highways without water in sweltering heat.
"We want help," people chanted at the city's convention center, where thousands of evacuees were told to seek shelter when Katrina pounded the U.S. Gulf Coast on Monday, only to find woefully inadequate supplies of food or water.
Several corpses lay in nearby streets. The body of one elderly woman was abandoned in her wheelchair, covered with just a blanket.
------------------------------------------------
>From the New York Times News Service:
Another concern, Dr. Irwin Redlener said, is that people may have lost or become separated from the drugs they rely on daily for diabetes, heart disease and other chronic ailments. Pharmacies in the affected areas may have insufficient stocks of vital drugs like insulin for diabetics, creating a need to organize efforts to import and distribute essential medicines in the area. The shortage could go on for months, Redlener said.
Many people who stayed in affected areas probably had disabilities that prevented them from leaving before the hurricane, Redlener said.
-------------------------------------------------
>From Newhouse News Service:
There were people in wheelchairs, people in hospital gowns, people still strapped to gurneys with IVs in their arms. There were amputees, blind people, mentally ill people.
They were people who thought they might not make it.
Albert Hall was one of them. He's got a prosthetic leg and uses a wheelchair. He said as the water rose to the second floor of his 350-unit apartment building, others were able to get up on the roof of the building.
"I couldn't get on the roof with this thing," he said, pointing to his prosthesis. "So I stayed on the balcony. I kept hollering and hollering 'Help, help!' every time a boat came near, but no one could hear me. I was down and crazy with hollering. It was awful. I really thought I was done for."
By the time a police boat picked him up, he was nearly out of insulin.
So was Irene Williams, another one of the evacuees. Diabetes has left her with poor circulation that makes it difficult to walk. And driving wasn't an option for her and her sister.
"We would have liked to go, but we didn't have the funds to go," Williams said. "We're used to storms, though. So we thought we could ride it out."
------------------------------------------------
>From Cox News Service:
Alone in her one-bedroom house, Fluffy Sparks sat in her wheelchair and did the only thing she could think of when Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters rushed into her home: she prayed.
"I prayed like I've never prayed in all my life," said Sparks, 46.
Unable to leave, she sat terrified as the water slowly rose past her ankles, up her shoulders and finally to her chin.
"I told God, 'I can't believe you're ready for me now. Don't let me die in this water here by myself.'"
Sparks managed to haul herself onto her small kitchen table.
Miraculously, the water stopped rising just as it reached the table's top.
"I'm breathing," she said Tuesday morning, sweating in a mud-stained gown while watching a parade of people wading and passing by in small fishing boats on Fremaux Street, which was covered by thigh-deep, but receding, waters. "It was horrible, and it's still horrible, but I'm breathing."
Sparks' terrifying story is just one of hundreds, possibly thousands, that will be shared for generations in Katrina's aftermath.
------------------------------------------------
>From the Globe and Mail:
"Help!" was the plea from a person in a wheelchair in New Orleans that flashed mid-storm on the BlackBerry of Mark Smith of the Louisiana office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. "There's nothing we can do for this person right now," he said.
--------------------------------------------------
>From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Adrian Ory, 57, arrived in Houston today with her deaf daughter, Adrian Munguia, 39, and her 10-year-old granddaughter, Angel, who uses a wheelchair that had to be left behind in New Orelans. Angel was lying on a cot under a blanket.
Ory and Munguia live in different apartments near Legion Field in New Orleans, but they were together when the water started rising.
Munguia hadnt wanted to leave.
She didnt think it would do all this, and I didnt think it would either.
So I stayed with her, Ory said.
That wind started cutting up. It was blowing and blowing. Man, that water started rising you couldnt see no cars. I opened the front door and it was right up to here, she said, holding her hand chest-high.
I saw bodies floating by, dogs on top of roofs, dogs swimming.
As the water kept rising, the family escaped to a second-floor hallway, where they shouted for help out of a window and waved towels to attract attention. Eventually they were rescued by a National Guard boat.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Ward, Founder and President
ADA Watch/National Coalition for Disability Rights
1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20004
Voice: 202-415-4753
Email: jim4ward@aol.com
Visit Our Website: www.adawatch.org
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEWS RELEASE
NCD #05496
September 2, 2005
Contact: Mark S. Quigley
202-272-2004
202-272-2074 TTY
National Council on Disability Calls for Federal Disability
Recovery Plan in Response to Hurricane Katrina
WASHINGTONThe National Council on Disability (NCD) expresses its deep concern for the tremendous loss of life and devastation caused in the southern part of the United States by Hurricane Katrina and urges the Federal Government to craft a strong coordinated Federal Disability Recovery Plan for the victims and survivors of the hurricane.
According to NCD chairperson Lex Frieden, Current data indicates that people with disabilities are now most at risk in this situationand will need recovery assistance for months or years. A disproportionate number of the Hurricane survivors are people with disabilities whose needs for basic necessities are compounded by chronic health conditions and functional impairments. Relief agencies must prioritize efforts and take special steps to address the unique and complex needs of this population.
NCDs 2005 report titled Saving Lives: Including People with Disabilities in Emergency Planning
(http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/2005/publications.htm)
recommends immediate federal changes in emergency planning for people with disabilities. NCD encourages Hurricane Katrina responders to follow the findings and recommendations in this timely report.
Saving Lives: Including People with Disabilities in Emergency Planning, NCDs 2005 report, provides an overview of steps the Federal Government should take to build a solid and resilient infrastructure that will enable the government to include the diverse populations of people with disabilities in emergency preparedness, disaster relief, and homeland security programs. This infrastructure would incorporate access to technology, physical plants, programs, and communications. It also would include procurement and emergency programs and services.
NCD commends the Administration and those in leadership positions for the issuance of the July 22, 2004, Executive Order on people with disabilities and emergency preparedness. In addition, NCD acknowledges the work of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in their efforts to ensure that Americans with disabilities are included in the developing infrastructure.
All too often in emergency situations the legitimate concerns of people with disabilities are overlooked or swept aside. In areas ranging from the accessibility of emergency information to the evacuation plans for high-rise buildings, great urgency surrounds the need for responding to the concerns of people with disabilities in all planning, preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation activities. The homeland security terrorist event of September 11, 2001, as well as the recent energy blackouts in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest and, more recently, the natural disaster hurricane events in Florida, the tsunami event of 2004, and this most recent event, Hurricane Katrina, underscore the need to pay attention to the concerns raised in this report, Frieden said.
The decisions the Federal Government makes, the priority it accords to civil rights, and the methods it adopts to ensure uniformity in the ways agencies handle their disability-related responsibilities are likely to be established in the early days of an emergency situation and be difficult to change if not set on the right course at the outset. By way of this report, NCD offers advice to assist the Federal Government in establishing policies and practices in these areas. This report provides examples of community efforts with respect to people with disabilities, but by no means does it provide a comprehensive treatment of the emergency preparedness, disaster relief, or homeland security program efforts by state and local governments.
Please visit https://disasterhelp.gov/portal/jhtml/index.jhtml, the Federal Governments Web portal for disaster information and help.
For more information, contact Mark Quigley at 202-272-2008.
Mark S. Quigley
Director of Communications
National Council on Disability
1331 F Street, NW, Suite 850
Washington, DC 20004
202-272-2008
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Peace, everyone at American RSDHope
www.RSDHope.org
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