A Little Something Extra For Everyone With This Week's Paycheck
My friend Scott is a therapist specializing in trauma who volunteered to go work for the Red Cross in the aftermath of Katrina. He's been forwarding me the emails from one of his friends displaced by the storm in New Orleans, and I found this part interesting:
Ecologically, I don't even want to think. The smell was just overpowering, Imagine low tide-chemicals-death-garbage-and just general decay. Thank god we brought protective gear. The water is a black ooze that just screams danger-luckily we never really had to get in it. On our boots in the office but that's about it. Scarier is the dried dust-it looks like ash-very fine and stuck to everything. Grass dead whereever the water sat for awhile-We had chemical/toxic dust rated masks. Helped keep out the smell and the idea of dust. I could write for days and not really express the experience and pictures don't come close. you have to be there and experience all 5 senses at once, and just know you have to leave fast!!!Well the anti-science GOP has sneered at the dangers of uranium munitions in Iraq, I don't imagine they'll be fazed much by exposing soldiers to a little toxic bilge water.
(snip)
Somebody should be asking the military powers that be why these soldiers aren't wearing masks/protective gear of some sort.
Shit, don't we owe these people just a little bit better than that?
posted by Jane Hamsher @ 9/14/2005 09:06:00 PM
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