[Leica] RE: PAW Week 3 Jeffrey---Nagin

[Engl6914 at cableone.net (Lee England)]

Norm,

    I've been involved with triage before--real triage--and it ain't pretty.
Triage in this case isn't germane; the resources exist to help New Orleans
recover.  I said it in a prior post, and I'll say it again; if the
electrical power grid is re-established, telephone service made reliable,
potable water supplied and an announcement made that forthwith construction
will start to build up the lake and canal levees to hold the big storms out,
then private enterprise would take care of the rest.  The levees can be
built that way--all of the Mississippi River levees held.  The canal and
lake levees can be built up that way as well.  I believe these are basic
services you'd think any government would want to accomplish in a recovery.
    The port of New Orleans is a huge enterprise and vital to the United
States.  My brother, who directs traffic at the port, tells me the port
extends from the mouth of the Miss. River where the supertankers dock all
the way up the river 180 miles.  A city will have to exist at New Orleans to
service the port.  There're too many specialized personnel and businesses
needed not to have a city.  An enormous amount of the energy comsumed in the
US goes through the port, in addition to untold amounts of goods entering
and leaving the US via barges on the Mississippi River.  I cross the river
every day here in Natchez and rarely will there not be a huge barge tow in
sight and moving up or downstream.
    But frankly, I don't think it should have to be justified; that kind of
relief work is just what you do.  I can still hear the lieutenant thundering
out into the night at us--"Help your buddy!"  It shouldn't be treated as an
accounting or an investment exercise.  Helping the ones who need it helps
the helpers.  It helps the morale and esprit of the whole--it makes them
stronger.
    And your plan of helping people by making them live life the way you
think they ought to be--by moving to say, Minnesota, is all very grand.
Funny thing, though--they just want to go home.  And they shouldn't be
compared to drug addicts.  My friend, Kent Treadway, the pediatric resident
when I was a medical student on the wards at Charity Hospital, committed
suicide a short time back.  It had been so difficult getting his practice
built up in New Orleans--I think he did it out of despair over losing his
practice and home--everything.  I honestly think many people across the
country don't have an appreciation of the suffering down here.

Lee England
Natchez, Mississippi  USA


> Norm wrote:  There is a term used in
> the medical profession - it's triage.   When time and resources are 
> limited,
> or when there are competing needs, one must use the available resources in
> the most effective way possible, or suffer even greater losses for failing
> to make appropriate judgment.

 I believe in trying to help cure an addict, or an
> alcoholic, not in building another bar or crack house for them when the old
> one gets destroyed