Paramedic Patrick Keathley of Benicia happened to be in New Orleans with seven colleagues for an industry convention as a small storm called Katrina, off the coast of Florida, changed course and picked up steam.Looks like the article that started this thread was accurate"We didn't realize the storm was going to be as big as it was, or that it would turn and hit Louisiana," Keathley said.
"By the time we did, we couldn't get a rental car, even though we had one reserved, because everyone was fleeing," he said by rapidly dying cell phone as he made his way back to California.
The eight paramedics were forced to ride out the storm in their hotel on the Louisiana coast.
"It was like hell," Keathley said. "Completely black. We heard structural-sounding noises, and we went out to take a look and we saw debris flying. Palm trees."
Keathley said the men barricaded themselves with about 40 others inside the hotel for 12 hours as the storm raged around them.
"We thought we were going to die. And that was before the water started rising. We got out before the flooding, just as the city started to flood," Keathley said. "We met this little old lady with a car who wanted to go to Lafayette. So we piled into her VW and drove her there."
The men rented a car in Lafayette and drove to their firm's location in Baton Rouge where they volunteered to stay and help.
"We wanted to assist. It was Ground Zero in a place called Hancock, Mississippi. Half the town was wiped out. They had a 50-foot wave destroy the hospital. Cars were piled on top of each other. There were bodies in the trees. There were bodies littering the beach.
"This is catastrophic," he added. "We were just as much in shock as anyone. We set up like a M.A.S.H. station. People came in carrying dead people. They came in with broken bones, and we didn't have the equipment to help them. We could only give them something for the pain.
"People were fighting for food. It was just a mess. There are still 1,000 people missing from there."
Keathley told of a young boy, about 13, arriving at the makeshift hospital asking for a tetanus shot.
"We told him he needed parental consent, but he told us he didn't have parents. They floated off, he said. I worked in Oakland after the Loma Prieta quake, and that was terrible, but it was nothing like this. This is such a huge scale. It's just hard to explain," Keathley said.
Keathley and his colleagues have had little water, food or sleep for several days, and now that he's home, Keathley said he plans to rest.
"First, I'll see my wife. Then I'll take a nap and some time off," he said. "I can't go back there right now. It's just too much."
"Concerns over how badly Katrina tore into families and how shook people are is that officials have not released death figures. It will be shocking. One person who I know that is working on the recovery of bodies said that the teams are not being informed of the totals."If accurate, it would explain the silence from Mississippi.