NEW ORLEANS -- Thousands of sick and frail victims of Hurricane Katrina, evacuated from nursing homes, hospitals and what once were their homes, poured into Louis Armstrong International Airport on Friday, where a medical center had been set up.
Those who needed sophisticated intervention were sent to hospitals as far away as San Francisco. Hundreds more lay all but naked on narrow cots on the floor, as medics and disaster-response teams worked to keep up with the flow of patients.
"These people are just waiting to get out. Basically it's a shelter at this point," said Michael Rieger, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "They're coming in faster than we can get them out."
After days of fitful starts, the city's hospitals began a full-scale evacuation Friday. Military rescuers took about 250 patients from Charity Hospital. But as with every other assistance effort in Katrina's aftermath, more daunting work awaited: Staff members at Charity still awaited evacuation, some rescue efforts came under fire and rescuers waited for safer conditions to finish the job. About 500 staff members and 110 patients awaited rescue at University Hospital, but rescuers had lost radio communications with them.
Around the city, many other sick and elderly people needed help too.
At a local message board on the Web site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, someone posted, "Kindred Hospital is running out of food and water. They can move the patients to their facility in Houston but can't get the buses in due to safety issues. How do we contact police, military, FEMA, etc. to get them help?"
It was just one of dozens of messages begging for help; many referred to elderly or disabled people trapped in apartment buildings and nursing homes, many out of or nearly out of food and water.
At the airport, one giant Chinook helicopter after another swooped in, dropping off storm evacuees as emergency responders waited with stretchers and wheelchairs. A motorized cart usually used to ferry baggage became a makeshift ambulance, moving dozens of patients.
The able-bodied were put on buses and sent to shelters, and the critically ill were flown to specialized hospitals around the country, officials said.
The others were assigned to beds, cots, wheelchairs or any corner of the airport where they could sit or stand.
There was no bed for Gerry Kaigler, 82, who's on her second evacuation since the storm hit Monday morning. She left her nursing home for a nearby Radisson hotel when Katrina arrived. She was evacuated to the airport Wednesday and forced to spend the night in a wheelchair. Nodding off periodically was about as close to slumber as she got.
"I spent the night without any sleep here at all," said Kaigler, who found a spot in front of the JetBlue ticket counter. "It was not comfortable."
Dozens of frail and often unconscious storm victims lay in cots on the floor in a corridor where travelers had found a crowded food court just a few days ago. Now, between the Back Alley Jazz Restaurant and the West Beignet pastry shop, a gaunt elderly woman was lying on nothing but a thin yellow windbreaker, a taped-up, soiled diaper abandoned at her feet. Dozens of full urine bottles fouled the air.
Rieger, the FEMA spokesman, said the plumbing had gone on the blink. He couldn't say when it would be restored.
"It's gone down," he said. "That's going to be a problem with so many people."
Just staying alive long enough to reach the airport was a major ordeal for most of those who were brought here. They told of daring rescues by neighbors and strangers alike, who carried them out of flooded houses, nursing homes and hotels. Authorities evacuated others from nursing homes and hospitals.
Roy Britz, 78, was taken from his powerless, waterless nursing home early Thursday morning, only to be turned around when his bus driver diverted the vehicle to avoid gunfire. He got to the airport later that morning and was placed in a chair in the center of the terminal.
Britz could do little but wait, impatiently. He said authorities either didn't have or wouldn't give him his diabetes medicine. He'd been clamoring for a cold drink all day. A Pepsi. A root beer. Anything, he said, but the warm bottled water he's getting.
Asked to describe his experience so far, Britz said, "It's been nothing but stupidity and hell."
Root reports for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram; Stearns covers Washington for The Kansas City Star.
