Latest info received on the New Orleans trip from Tex Beardmore to Kevin Reilly.
10/2/05
We have been to New Orleans & back.
Rickie and I went shopping Monday night and purchased enough sheets, pillow cases, towels & wash clothes for two changes of each bed. We pled our case to the night manager at K-Mart. He said that the company had made donations and they were not supposed contribute as individual stores. As I was walking away he said that maybe he could let us use an employee discount card, that would give us 10% off. It did, we still spent $ 472.62
We left Deale 11:10 am 9/27/05 headed for New Orleans. Bob Hall Distributors had donated 3 x 5 foot signs to be attached to the two motor homes and one RV trailer. The signs read "IAFF Fire Fighters helping New Orleans Fire Fighters.
The trip went uneventful until about 3:30 am, when Murphs motor home lost a tire. We were unable to locate the special size tire and had to spend the night @ Birmingham AL. Fire Station 32. As you might expect they did every thing they could for us. It was 11am before the correct tire was located and installed.
We started seeing trees and signs broken off about 240 miles before we got to New Orleans. We arrived @ Chuck Brockmeir's house about 7:30 pm Wednesday evening. Several firefighters and their families were there to welcome us.
We were very tired but stayed up late listening to the first hand accounts of what took place prior to,during and following the storm. The general gist was; they had lost a lot, some had lost their houses and every thing in them, their autos, and their families were living in several different states. FEMA had made some mistakes but should not be blamed for most of the problems. The city & state failed to follow the recommendations they had been given, they also failed to follow the plans that had been in place for some time. We went to bed about 1:30 am.
We got up in the morning and had breakfast complements of the Brockmeir's. We took some of the many, many boxes of clothes and left them at Chucks to be distributed as needed. We then took the rest of them to one of the down town stations and left them there. We again talked to fire fighters who had lost every thing and some who had lost summer homes. Some said they had been spared, but their families were displaced because the schools and other city services were not operational.
The fire fighters were not happy that the mayor had told the citizens to come back, when the sewage system, much of the water system, electricity and gas was not serviceable. In addition to that, food and water distribution systems had not been worked out. They were also worried that many of the people who were supposed to leave at the curfew hour, would not and the looting would pick up where it left off.
We returned to Chuck's, had lunch. It was evident that most of the rebuilding that we wanted to do, we could not. Decontamination of chemicals, mold and insurance problems will have to be worked out first. We told them that we would be back as soon as they had something for us to do.
I can't tell you how many times they thanked us all. They were truly moved that we had given so much to help them in their time of need.
We headed for home @ 2:30 pm on Thursday. Another straight through drive, we arrived home about 11:30am Friday.
A special thanks Charley Brown, Terry Horning, Paul Jackman, Larry Killen, & Bob Murphy for giving up some of their time and to Rob Dade, Jim Danico and Bob Murphy for giving up their vehicles to help our brother fire fighters in New Orleans. It was a long tiring trip, but one that left us all feeling that we had given them something that they truly needed.
