Disabled Child Dies Fleeing Hurricane Rita

Lisa Stanford, TeamNOLA Volunteer


A Story That Must Be Told NOW!

Team NOLA is a group of volunteers who are trying their hardest to help as many hurricane victims as possible. If only everyone would try to do the same!

Today, our friend Dana and TeamNOLA Volunteer was creeping through Humble, TX at a speed of no more than 4 miles per hour. She is in a caravan transporting 19 KATRINA evacuees that have also become Hurricane RITA evacuees, to Nacogdoches, TX, from Houston, TX.

Dana and her crew left Houston at around 4 a.m. Thursday and at around 3:30 p.m. they were only in Humble. On Hwy 59 in Humble, near the Kingwood exit, two white vans full of disabled children were stopped in the middle of the road. Cars were driving around them as if they were piles of roadkill. The vans had stopped suddenly because one of the disabled children (a 16 year old boy, we believe) had stopped breathing.

The caretakers were performing CPR, but received no help from the other drivers.

After 30 minutes, TeamNOLA Volunteer Dana finally reached the scene, and pulled over to help. She took down the license plate and called our TeamNOLA Volunteer, Bobi/SRAngel, in California.

Bobi took the information and called her 911 in California, who patched her through to one in Humble. The operator told Bobi that they had just received a call and were going to dispatch help.

The incident began 45 minutes before the first 911 call was received. Who knows how long it took help to arrive? Who knows if anyone even cares about this young person's death? Who knows if anyone out there reading this email will do a damn thing to be sure the child's death doesn't go unnoticed?

This death of this disabled child was a result of the inability of our Government to get organized in times of crisis!

No one should have to sit in traffic for TWELVE hours to evacuate a city. Who can afford to run an air conditioner for that long? With gas as scarce as it is now on the highways of Texas, running the air conditioning in a vehicle is as dangerous as not running it at all.

We all know A/C's use gas, so sitting in traffic for 12 hours would require using up all of the gas on air conditioning, or saving gas for driving the hell out of Dodge.

I do not know if this child died of heatstroke or other causes. I do know that his death could very well have been prevented had our emergency plans been reasonable or well-thought out.

Where is the organization? Where is the money for prevention of mass panic and chaos? Where are the reinforcements to help all of these travelers with their evacuation?

Please do not let this issue die with the young disabled man.

Lisa Stanford