Katrina an eye-opener for U. team

Lots of hugs and a military command structure — that's the yin and yang of emergency relief, says a team of 26 University of Utah doctors and nurses who have returned from New Orleans.

Team members, some of them sporting New Orleans Fire Department T-shirts, spoke to reporters Monday after spending two weeks in the Gulf Coast tending to hurricane evacuees and rescue workers.

The team, which shipped out before dawn on Sept. 4, was assembled in 16 hours after University Health Care administrators decided to answer a plea from health-care workers at Louisiana State University. The U. footed the bill for the expedition, said hospital administration director Rick Fullmer.

"I don't think anyone will reimburse us," Fullmer said. "But the federal response was so slow, we had to get them going."

The doctors and nurses got a first-hand tutorial on emergency management, learning lessons that can help Utah become more prepared, said Dr. Steven Bott, a University Health Care anesthesiologist and the expedition's leader.

"A military command structure is incredibly important, so you don't have six people who think they're each in charge," said Bott, who found emergency operations chaotic, often with no clear leaders. Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the area is just now beginning to get its 911 service up and running.

The team spent the first few days treating evacuees at an abandoned Baton Rouge Kmart, dubbed "Our Lady of the Perpetual Blue Light," joked University Health Care nurse Alan Nielson. During those first few days, several of the team's critical-care nurses also treated patients at the Earl K. Long Hospital.

Later, the doctors and nurses helped run two makeshift clinics set up in the field house and basketball stadium at LSU. During the second week they set up a clinic at Holy Cross Community College in New Orleans to treat exhausted and injured firefighters, police and paramedics.

The emergency workers had cuts, infections and rashes caused by exposure to the fetid waters of New Orleans. The first responders also suffered from hypertension and diabetes, initially untreated because they had to abandon medications in their flooded homes. They suffered from the stress of their jobs — sometimes working in isolated situations, trying to rescue people on their own — and the additional stress of not knowing about their own homes and families, said Dr. Ted Liou.