This is from an email I got from my brother.  It’s an interesting perspective on the whole shelter/entitlement mentality of at least a percentage of those forced to be evacuated for Hurricane Gustave.  I assume it’s a letter to Bill O’Reilly, but am not 100% sure:

Hello Mr. O’Reilly

I am a nurse who has just completed working approximately 120 hours as the clinic director in a Hurricane Gustav evacuation shelter in Shreveport, Louisiana over the last 7 days.  I would love to see someone look at the evacuee situation from a new perspective.  Local and national news channels have covered the evacuation and ‘horrible’ conditions the evacuees had to endure during Hurricane Gustav.

True - some things were not optimal for the evacuation and the shelters need some modification. At any point, does anyone address the responsibility (or irresponsibility) of the evacuees? Does it seem wrong that one would remember their cell phone, charger,cigarettes and lighter but forget their child’s insulin?

Is something amiss when an evacuee gets off the bus, walks immediately to the medical area, and requests immediate free refills on all medicines for which they cannot provide a prescription or current bottle (most of which are narcotics)?

Isn’t the system flawed when an evacuee says they cannot afford a $3 copay for a refill that will be delivered to them in the shelter yet they can take a city-provided bus to Wal-mart, buy 5 bottles of Vodka, and return to consume them secretly in the shelter?

Is it fair to stop performing luggage checks on incoming evacuees so as not to delay the registration process but endanger the volunteer staff and other persons with the very realistic truth of drugs, alcohol and weapons being brought into the shelter?

Am I less than compassionate when it frustrates me to scrub emesis from the floor near a nauseated child while his mother lies nearby, watching me work 26 hours straight, not even raising her head from the pillow to comfort her own son?

Why does it insense me to hear a man say ‘I ain’t goin’ home ’til I get my FEMA check’  when I would love to just go home and see my daughters who I have only seen 3 times this week?

Is the system flawed when the privately insured patient must find a way to get to the pharmacy, fill his prescription and pay his copay while the FEMA declaration allows the uninsured person to acquire free medications under the disaster rules?

Does it seem odd that the nurse volunteering at the shelter is paying for childcare while the evacuee sits on a cot during the day as the shelter provides a ‘day care’?

Have government entitlements created this mentality and am I facilitating it with my work? Will I be a bad person, merciless nurse or poor Christian if I hesitate to work at the next shelter because I have worked for 7 days being called every curse word imaginable, felt threatened and feared for my personal safety in the shelter?

Exhausted and battered but hopefully pithy, Sherri Hagerhjelm, RN

As some of you may know I was in Shreveport, LA, for the hurricane, however I wasn’t witness to any of this. Unfortunately, though, I do not find this sort of report in the least bit surprising.

An interesting story on the importance of high school football in Louisiana. My favorite passage, regarding a game last season:

On Friday night, Crutchfield sat down to dinner at a restaurant in Belle Chasse, La. Midway through a meal of shrimp and crabs, he said, “The game was canceled.”

Eva Jones, the parish school superintendent, wanted all school buses available to assist in any evacuation, he said. So she called off the game.

Crutchfield told how he phoned Paul Lemaire, a school board member. Lemaire had kicked the winning field goal for Port Sulphur High in the 1979 state championship game. Lemaire called Jones.

“You can’t just cancel a game by yourself,” Lemaire said he told Jones. “Both teams have to agree.”

It might be raining, Jones said.

“As long as there’s no lightning, that’s part of the game,” Lemaire said.

The game was uncanceled.

Plaquemines Parish football recovery