Posted on 11/01/2005 4:14:45 AM PST by Graybeard58
HOUMA -- A 26-year-old urologist is credited with helping save hundreds of New Orleans hurricane victims who spent days stranded on a highway overpass.
Packing a stethoscope in one hand and a loaded handgun in the other, Scott Delacroix Jr. provided medical care and helped evacuate people stranded on Interstate 10 and Causeway Boulevard in Metairie during the days following Hurricane Katrina.
His adventures are chronicled on a Web site and in the scribbled notes he made on the leather seats of his SUV.
Delacroix, a New Orleans doctor now working at Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center in east Houma, got involved with rescue efforts after receiving a call for help from Dr. London Guidry, a surgery resident at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Rising floodwaters had trapped Guidry, his co-workers and hundreds of patients in the hospital, where the storm had knocked out power.
Amid rumors of looting and attacks on rescue personnel, Guidry was desperate to get patients to safety.
While searching for a passable route to Charity, Delacroix stumbled across the I-10 overpass, where people, some ill or injured, awaited rescue. Hospital patients, people with mental illnesses and nursing-home residents were among those stranded on the concrete span, and the evacuees, who had no food or water, were battling dehydration and exhaustion.
The young doctor took one look, rolled up his sleeves and spent the next few days coordinating triage efforts and shuttling people to safety.
One pocket of his lab coat contained medicine and the other held bullets for the .38-caliber revolver secured in his scrub pants.
Many evacuees were desperate and angry after spending days in the broiling heat. Water and medical supplies were low. Only one person from the Federal Emergency Management Agency was on duty, Delacroix said, and he was there to coordinate traffic as helicopters continued to deposit additional evacuees on the interstate bridge.
Occasionally buses would arrive to take evacuees to a shelter. It was disheartening, Delacroix said, to watch younger, healthier people crowd past the sick to grab a seat on the bus.
Although he had no control over buses, Delacroix was able to choose who would be airlifted to a medical center. He and military rescuers packed up to 14 people on a single Black Hawk helicopter.
Delacroix helped some ferry their animals to safety by secreting dogs inside taped boxes and hiding cats in bags.
"Don’t tell (authorities) what you have until you get somewhere," he told the pet owners.
At dawn on Sept. 1, Delacroix and a small team of Houma Police officers, health workers and NBC newsmen strapped on bulletproof vests, loaded their weapons and climbed into a Black Hawk. They were bound for a Mid-City building where 150 seniors were trapped without water. But after that mission was accomplished, the team emerged to find the helicopter gone, darkness falling and gunfire blasting nearby. They huddled in a nearby baseball dugout until the officers made radio contact with another helicopter that rescued them.
They eventually made their way to the New Orleans airport, where Delacroix’s offers to help the sick there were refused.
FEMA agents in charge of the medical area refused to allow doctors who were not government-licensed physicians to assist the sick, he said.
Four days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, he made his way to Baton Rouge, loaded his SUV with medical supplies and headed back to Metairie, where the crowd still numbered about 5,000.
Determined to reach Charity, he, a friend and a Houma Police officer used an airboat and a shotgun borrowed from a federal judge to rescue those they feared where still stranded at the hospital.
They passed bodies of the dead and, fearing looters, nearly engaged in a shootout with another boatload of people before they realized they were evacuees bound for safety. Unable to reach the hospital, the rescue team went back to the overpass.
When he wasn’t caring for patients or coordinating airlifts, Delacroix placed dozens of calls seeking supplies, federal help and to find out if his friends at Charity had been rescued. He kept notes during each call, which he scribbled on every available surface, including his white scrub coat and the leather seats of his SUV.
He stayed on the overpass until Sept. 3, when squadrons of helicopters crowded the air and began rapid evacuations.
The medical team at Charity was eventually rescued, and Delacroix headed to Houma, where a local couple offered him a place to stay. He will likely begin a stint at Ochsner’s hospital in New Orleans in January.
In the meantime, Delacroix said he is happy to be practicing medicine in a hospital again and that he doesn’t have to keep a gun in his pocket while he’s doing it.
The journal Delacroix kept detailing his adventures is posted on the medical Web site medscape.com.
Well done Doc, thank you for doing what had to be done.
??
Gee, from what I heard, FEMA was no where to be found. How then, did they enforce that policy?
Those FEMA agents should be shot. From the abuses I keep hearing about that organization, it should be dismantled. Thanks to the good doctor.
How can this guy be practicing medicine if he isn't licensed? Lemme guess, he was practicing gynocology. Free exam.
You know that really isn't funny at all. Why would you make such a crass remark about a man who did an incredible thing?
Well, not everything in this story adds up. Let's assume he just got out of 4 years of Urology Residency, that makes him 22 when he started the program as a med school grad, or 18 when he started med school. Doesn't make sense.
Probably a misprint. He looks 36.
Ah, that why he's not "government licensed". He's probably still an intern.
It's called "lawsuit protection". Just a small part of the price we pay for a litigious society.
Why didn't Shepherd Smith report ANY of these heroic efforts? When times are tough, the though get going.....Shep's not so tough.
Hey, give Shep a break! He was dangerously low on eyeliner...
Good thing we don't shoot people based on rumors spread by 26-year-olds.
Or rumors spread by allegedly authoritative "news agencies."
FEMA agents in charge of the medical area refused to allow doctors who were not government-licensed physicians to assist the sick, he said.
----
so they don't get treated at all....
Not to mention that he has been on the board of the Louisiana State Medical Society last year and this year (as a resident representative). He must be extremely well connected in the Blanco/Reggie/Landrieu society world.
State or local FEMA?
He's older than 26.
From his blog: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/512725
Scott E. Delacroix, Jr., MD, PGY-2 Urology Resident, Department of Urologic Surgery, Ochsner Clinic Foundation, New Orleans, Louisiana; PGY-2 Urology Resident, Department of Urologic Surgery, Louisiana State University, New Orleans, Louisiana. Email: scottdelacroix@hotmail.com .
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