United Peace Relief Slidell LA Day 6 November 26, 2005 Saturday
Today we have to get up at 4:30 am to get Bob and Shannon to the airport.  It is sad that they are leaving.  I have accomplished my goal of giving Bob the Katrina bug and he already wants to come back.  It only takes 45 min. to get to the airport so I ended up at the Common Ground Clinic before they were open.  They have internet there so I finally found time to write my journals.  Slowly the clinic starts to stir as I am typing away. Today Cottie Morrison a Nurse Practitioner Read More...

United Peace Relief
Slidell, LA
November 25  Day 5
Friday

Today we got up early and take off for New Orleans.  I am scheduled to work as a PA in the Common Ground Clinic.  I am taking my good friend Christina Cruz there to meet her new friend so they can do some disaster sight seeing before they fly out today.  She is a bilingual social worker who came from San Francisco to volunteer at the clinic this week.  We hit he ground running as the clinic is alive at 8 in the morning.
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United Peace Relief Slidell, Louisiana Day 4 Thanksgiving Day November 24
We woke up to the mist over the meadows and the bayou.  Everyone happy about our successes and feeling thankful for our life and our group of wonderful people who are choosing to volunteer to give service in this disaster.
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United Peace Relief
Slidell, Louisiana
November 23, Day 3

Wednesday is the day for our big meeting. United Peace Relief (UPR) wants to work in collaboration with other alternative relief organizations. We invited many people to come to a meeting at Common Ground Collective in Algiers, on the outskirts of New Orleans. Common Ground (CG) has been up and running since right after Katrina hit. They have a distribution center and a free clinic. We have been recruiting medical volunteers for their clinic, where they are seeing about 100 patients per day.
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United Peace Relief Slidell, Louisiana Day 2 Nov. 22 Tuesday
Early in the morning we took off to Biloxi and Waveland Mississippi. The devastation in these areas is overwhelming.  It goes on for a hundred miles. Imagine that a town the size of Santa Rosa was pretty much destroyed, houses off foundations, piles of debris everywhere. Business closed down. Mile after mile.
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United Peace Relief Journal Slidell Louisiana Day 1 November 21
We traveled from San Francisco to New Orleans and arrived in the afternoon with so much luggage it was crazy.  We brought the max, solar showers, medicine, blankets, and more.  Myself, Deborah, my husband Bob, and our 16 year old son Shannon were stuffed into the smallest rental car, literally packed to the gills.  We found our way through New Orleans and were amazed at the feeling of a ghost town, even though there is traffic on the freeways, the residential streets are empty and Read More...

Dear Friends and Family, I am now on my way to NYC and Massachusetts...I should be there by Friday night. It is a little strange right now to be in places where there is normalcy....no piles of trash in the streets, houses are where they belong, businesses are busy. My first afternoon out of Katrina zone, I was in Mobile Alabama and the sight of this normalcy was shocking...now it is just strange, and I imagine that in a few more days, normal will be, well, normal. We run the risk of forgetting what Read More...

The Following was provided by Liz Rantz of Missoula Medical Aid on
11/6/05:
Last Update - from the New Orleans Airport
Sitting in a ghost airport.   about 15 flights a day out, all the restaurants are closed, one bookseller open.  Fascinating conversation with  a fellow whose father was in Tenet hospital when the floods came, he  was one of the lucky ones to get out.  And about the numbers of older folks  who have died since the hurricane, evacuated to nowhere, lose the drive to go  on.  Won't be counted as a hurricane death....... Read More...