After a couple of weeks in New Orleans with an emergency team providing aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina, Philomath residents Peggy Peirson and Dan Kearl spent only a few days at home resting up and telling stories before getting ready to head back and continue recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast.

Members of Oregon's Disaster Medical Assistance Team, a mobile medical unit funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, arrived home exhausted and shell-shocked on Sept. 10 and were put on alert to go back Thursday. The call to fly out can come at any moment.

The scenes they have already encountered at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport top any movie or, for that matter, any experience they have ever witnessed, they said.

Tens of thousands of terrified evacuees, continually on the edge of rioting; a sea of injured in wheelchairs and stretchers covering the floor of the airport; deplorable conditions — no power, little water or food; a lack of emergency medical supplies and groups of dedicated medical professionals improvising to provide the best care they can while surrounded by chaos and filth.

"We waded through blood and urine and feces and vomit all day every day," said Peirson, Benton County's emergency services coordinator.

As the team's logistics chief, Peirson deployed in 2004 to Florida to aid those injured in hurricanes Francis, Ivan and Jeanne.

The magnitude of the destruction and sheer number of evacuees displaced by Hurricane Katrina make those deployments look like a "walk in the park," she said.

At the end of August, Peirson watched the news of developing tropical storm Katrina with keen interest, knowing the Oregon medical team might be deployed if a hurricane hit the Gulf Coast.

As it turned out, Peirson went with the Washington State DMA team, which needed a few members to fill out its unit.

She flew to Houston, where the team waited for its assignment, Aug. 28. They soon moved closer to the expected site of the hurricane's landfall, to Baton Rouge, La., and on Aug. 29 they received their mission, heading to the Superdome in New Orleans to provide medical relief to evacuees.

Even before the levees broke, floodwaters were seeping into the city, Peirson recalled.

"We took off in a convoy and drove to the dome during the night through floodwaters."

At the Superdome, a New Mexico DMA team was unloading its supplies and equipment. Before the Washington team could to do the same, Peirson noticed the vehicles around her were floating.

The Washington team dashed through rising floodwaters, leaving the New Mexico team at the Superdome, where evacuees were being herded to the upper levels.

Early the morning of Aug. 30, the Washington team set up on higher ground at the airport on the edge of town.

Working on 40 hours without sleep, the unit set up its mobile triage and treatment center, joining two DMA teams from Texas. All together, that totaled about 100 people to deal with the huge number of patients and refugees who arrived in the next few days.

"You know that saying, ‘Build it and they will come?'" Peirson asked. "We built it and they came. They came and they came, by the thousands."

Out on the tarmac, Peirson looked up at the road leading to the airport. Rows of ambulances, three abreast, stretched out for at least a mile.

"Flashing red lights. Rows and rows of them for as far as I could see."

Each ambulance was packed with five or six patients. About 70 times per hour, helicopters dropped off loads of people. Hospitals and nursing homes in the area emptied, sending their wards to the airport.

And so began the endless round of unloading patients, assessing injuries and illnesses, providing treatment where possible and sending patients back out in huge military transport planes.

New Orleans' most vulnerable — the poor, the disabled, the elderly — streamed into the makeshift hospital and evacuation center.

Some were panic stricken; some were reluctant to evacuate. Many showed up bearing guns, knives and other weapons.

An elderly woman handed Peirson a loaded .357 Magnum, saying, "Take this. I feel safe now."

Tagging the injured

Hundreds of wrenching decisions were made as doctors were required to triage the multitude of patients. Each was tagged with a card indicating the degree of illness or injury and, essentially, a prediction as to whether that person could be helped.

A green band at the end of a tag meant the person had a minor, relatively easily treated condition. Yellow indicated treatment could be delayed for some time. Red meant "get to this patient immediately."

Most heartbreaking, Peirson said, were the black banded tags. A black tag indicated that the patient had died or was untreatable. The dead were placed in a refrigerated morgue powered by generators.

Those tagged as doomed were taken to an area of the airport "hospital" where they could receive at least a minimal amount of comfort care.

"I remember when the black areas began to form," she said.

DMA team members are trained to expect such triage in a mass casualty situation.

"You write plans for it and exercise with it, but until you really have to do that and put the black tag on somebody, you just have no idea how difficult it is. It's just real hard. These people are somebody's grandparents and parents."

The situation was exacerbated in the first few days by conditions that included humid, 100-degree heat, no electrical power, no potable water, sleeping on a baggage claim carousel and not enough medical supplies. The Texas teams lacked many needed supplies, and the Washington team's cache had not arrived yet, Peirson said.

The medical conditions facing the teams in the first few days were predictable: Elderly people with chronic diseases, many diabetics, cardiac patients, people with skin infections from water-borne bacteria, dehydration and life-threatening diarrhea. Babies were born.

Predictable conditions that required predictable supplies. Supplies that the teams did not have.

Peirson's requests to FEMA for supplies went unanswered, she said. She still doesn't know why.

Doctors did what they could to save as many people as they could by improvising.

Many patients relied on ventilators for artificial respiration. The Texas teams had none. Patients who needed help breathing were "hand bagged."

Peirson demonstrated with her hands the motion of pressing a plastic air bag together and letting it expand again. This low-tech method kept numerous people breathing.

"One patient was hand bagged for 35 hours," Peirson said.

A colostomy bag was rigged out of a red plastic biohazard bag and duct tape.

"It was battlefield medicine," Peirson said. "I never thought I'd see anything like this in my lifetime without being in a military role."

Then angels in trucks and helicopters arrived.

"We didn't receive the supplies until the military showed up," Peirson said. "They can move masses of people and masses of equipment and masses of supplies fast. When we couldn't get supplies any other way, a major said, ‘Tell me what you need.' I said, ‘You're kidding.'"

Peirson compiled a list and everything was brought immediately, including uncommon items such as hydration formulas for infants and baby powder for people developing skin rashes.

Oregon team arrives

Toward the end of that first week, there was a measure of relief. The power came back on, the Oregon DMA team arrived and the military showed up in force.

"When the Oregon team arrived, it felt like they brought the power with them," Peirson said. "It was such a blessing to have them show up. These are the folks that I want to have with me in any difficult situations. They are well trained and committed beyond belief."

With the Oregon team came Kearl, a research and development engineer for Hewlett-Packard Co. This was Kearl's first deployment. He's been with the team as a communications officer for about six months.

As a volunteer with Marys Peak Search and Rescue and Benton County Amateur Radio Emergency Services, Kearl felt he'd seen a lot on search-and-rescue missions. He was not prepared for what he found at the airport.

"I've kind of filed that away for future review and constructive emotional processing," he said.

Kearl carried a small notebook with him, jotting down entries of a few words every so often.

Highlights of the journal include the bizarre moment when the Krispy Kreme truck braved the floodwaters to deliver two pallets of doughnuts for medical workers and evacuees, and when President Bush arrived in Air Force One.

While doughnuts were welcome for feeding the hungry masses, the president's arrival tended to clog the works.

For several hours on Sept. 2 while Bush toured the Gulf Coast in a helicopter, stopping here and there for photos and interviews, all air traffic was shut down at the airport. Helicopters could not deliver patients and medical evacuees backed up at the hospital.

The same happened when Vice President Cheney came later.

At some point, former Vice President Al Gore arrived with much less fanfare. He was so unobtrusive that a harried medic, not realizing who he was, told the ex-vice president to stand in a corner and get out of the way.

Actor John Travolta, piloting his own 707, delivered a load of food and supplies.

A telling entry in Kearl's journal of one-liners is the feeling of comfort he felt when, after the soldiers arrived, the metallic clank and clicks of guns being unloaded and checked could be heard in the airport. After days of chaos and the fear of riots, the sound was comforting.

For every patient the mobile medical teams cared for, there were 10 evacuees at the airport. In the first days, the throng of about 30,000 was without food and water, hot, uncomfortable and afraid, Peirson said.

At one point, members of rival gangs were mistakenly housed on the same concourse. Assaults, stabbings, rapes and suicides occurred.

"The first few days were pretty scary and chaotic," Peirson said. "We had all the makings of a riot."

The DMA teams managed to diffuse the situation temporarily by giving out their own supplies of MREs — military freeze-dried "meals ready to eat" — and bottled water. They were distracted from their mission of medical care to attend to relatively healthy but unhappy evacuees.

"On the first day, we needed the Red Cross to deal with evacuees," Peirson said. "They didn't show up until the second week. I understand that they were concerned for their safety."

Keeping desperate people in terrifying conditions contributed to the unsafe situation, she said.

"I don't blame the people of New Orleans," she said.

The surprise heroes at the airport turned out to be the U.S. Forest Service. Hundreds of Forest Service workers from around the nation arrived to offer their support toward the end of the first week.

They're accustomed to providing temporary "housing" and meals to large groups of firefighters fighting wildfires.

"They know how to erect a city in a heartbeat," she said. "They had places to sleep that were clean and safe. And showers, oh my god, showers!"

Forest Services officials provided Kearl with better radios so the medical teams and military security could be on the same frequencies.

Possibly most appreciated was the break from MREs they provided.

"The Forest Service brought real food you could identify and chew," Peirson said.