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Scene seems unreal
Stunned by suffering they've seen but heartened by reaction to their help, Fredericksburg-area volunteers come to aid of Gulf Coast communities struck by Rita.
Date published: 9/26/2005 By PORTSIA SMITH By PORTSIA SMITH Stafford County resident Kevin Dillard says his past three weeks have been like a movie. The setting is the Gulf Coast, the period is September 2005, and the co-directors are Rita and Katrina. The plot: A huge portion of the region is devastated by deadly, back-to-back hurricanes, with whole communities left battered and soaked. Mostly evacuated, major cities sit silent like ghost towns. The few people who stayed behind fear for their lives--or what's left of it. Dillard, president of LifeCare Medical Transports of Stafford, said yesterday that he feels like a movie superhero as victims thank him for saving them from that reality. He and a crew of nine, who man five LifeCare ambulance trucks, are just some of the Fredericksburg-area residents who recently have volunteered their time to help hurricane victims and evacuees on the Gulf Coast. The LifeCare staffers first traveled to New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, but their efforts were pushed west toward Lake Charles, La., last Wednesday in advance of Hurricane Rita, which hit there Saturday. The group helped evacuate residents of two Lake Charles-area hospitals and a nursing home to the city's Chennault International Airpark, where the medical crew was staying. But when Rita collapsed some buildings in Lake Charles, including one at the airport, they had to move again. "They took a pretty hard hit," Dillard said of the city of nearly 72,000 residents. "About 95 percent got out of the city, but some people were hard-headed. Today, we are assisting some of the people who couldn't get out and are trapped in their homes." Rita came ashore early Saturday just to the south of Lake Charles as a Category 3 hurricane with 120-mph winds and heavy rains. Search-and-rescue teams working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived late Saturday in Lake Charles, in a convoy of about a dozen vehicles loaded with water, ready-to-eat meals, medical supplies and fuel. The western Louisiana city is mangled, with power poles and trees snapped, roofs blown off, buildings crushed and a white-capped Lake Charles spilling into downtown streets.
Date published: 9/26/2005
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