It's from Greg Simon and it is long.  Still, it is interesting reading.  I smiled when I read that one of the doctors involved was Anderson Spickard, renown Vanderbilt physician.  I have a lot of respect for Dr. Spickard from my experience working at Vandy.  A Note:  Description from FasterCures website:  "Our mission is to save lives by saving time in the discovery and development of new and effective treatments for deadly and debilitating diseases. ... FasterCures is an "action" tank committed to accelerating the medical research process to find new treatments and ... lives as rapidly as possible. FasterCures is a force for change..."  www.fastercures.org

From TMP Cafe
by Greg Simon, President FasterCures

On September 3rd and 4th, FasterCures worked with a
small dedicated group of people to airlift
approximately 270 medical patients and evacuees from
the New Orleans airport to hospitals and shelters in
Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee. This is the
story of how it happened.

On Thursday, September 1st, my friend Jill Chozen of
San Francisco called to ask if I could put someone in
touch with Al Gore. Dr. David Kline, the father in law
of Jill’s friend Denise Kline, was stranded in Charity
hospital in New Orleans. The situation was dire and
becoming worse by the minute – food and water running
out, no power, four feet of water surrounding the
hospital and alligators eating corpses outside. David
is a neurosurgeon and needed to take his patients out
of the hospital as soon as possible. David asked
Denise to find Al Gore for help because David knew
Gore from operating on Gore’s son after a life
threatening auto accident nearly 16 years ago.

I emailed Gore with Denise Kline’s number after
speaking to Jill and got an answer immediately. Gore
had phoned David in the hospital several times and
ascertained that he was now on the way to an Apache
Helicopter landing site with his patients. Things were
looking up.

The next day, Friday September 2nd, I heard an NPR
story that things were getting worse at Charity
hospital – they were actually taking in more patients
because the other nearby hospital –Tulane—was closed.
When I arrived at work, I knew what we had to do –we
had to evacuate medical patients from Charity to
safety.

My first idea was to find helicopters, trucks, planes
and a hospital. I called a friend at FedEx but their
planes are not good for carrying people. I called my
friend Steve Davison who charters planes for a living
– he felt he could help. I called Skila Harris, former
Chief of Staff to Tipper Gore and a director of TVA.
TVA had trucks going to New Orleans with water that
might be good for evacuating the patients on their
return trips. I emailed Gore for ideas, he suggested
St. Jude's in Memphis as a hospital to receive the
patients.

Meanwhile, Catherine Berger at FasterCures had
contacted Charity Hospital and was told that most of
the patients had now been evacuated to the airport
field hospital but were still in dire straits. Skila
reported that the Coast Guard had helicopters that
could help but need coordinates for landing. She also
reported that the University of Tennessee hospital
system might be willing to take the patients under the
supervision of the Tennessee Emergency Management
Agency.

Steve called back. He had found one, possibly two
planes. It would cost $50,000 per flight. FasterCures
would have to be prepared to sign contracts that day.
I called my home office and got permission to do that.
I emailed Gore and asked for his help in raising the
money. He committed to paying for the planes and urged
us to move forward. He also offered to bring two
doctors, his cousin Col. Dar LaFon, USAF Ret'd, who
served in Somalia and ran the military hospital in
Baghdad after the invasion. He was board certified in
Altitude Physiology and Internal Medicine. He also
brought a Doctor from Vanderbilt, Dr. Anderson
Spickard.

At this point Catherine Berger pulled up a story from
the DOD saying they had two medical teams evacuating
people from the hospitals and the airport and that the
ship COMFORT was sailing to New Orleans from
Baltimore. That did not sound like it was going to
help that many people for at least another day or two.
We carried on. (As it happens, the COMFORT never
reached New Orleans).

Skila confirmed that TEMA would find hospitals for the
patients. And then things got complicated. TEMA
required a FEMA "Mission Assignment" that would follow
the patients and allow the funding for those patients
to follow them into whatever hospital they ended up
in. Skila contacted FEMA and people with the National
Disaster Medical System (NDMS) who told her we could
not get a mission assignment because it is a "closed
loop" system only for the military and private help
was not allowed or wanted. (The NDMS system is the
same system DOD uses for distributing soldiers wounded
in Iraq to U.S. hospitals.) We were at an impasse.

I called Gore and explained the situation. He called
Gov. Bredesen of Tennessee who put us in touch with
the Tennessee FEMA people. After a brief interval, Jim
Bassham and Eddie Boatwright of the Tennessee FEMA
office reported back that all was clear and the TEMA
people could carry out the relocation in Tennessee.

Meanwhile, back at my day job at FasterCures, Larry
Flax, founder of California Pizza Kitchens, called me
to discuss his involvement with us. After I explained
what we were doing that day, he pledged to pay for one
plane with money CPK had raised for New Orleans. Also,
Martin Craig called from Chicago to report on his
recent successful prostate cancer surgery. He agreed
to locate hospitals in Chicago who would take
patients.

We were now desperate to find a contact on the ground
at the New Orleans airport to help triage ambulatory
medical patients into these planes. FEMA in Washington
was non responsive. We spoke to the aide to one of the
deputies at FEMA and was told they did not need or
want our help since the hospital evacuation was going
fine. We looked at the reports from CNN about the
conditions at the field hospital at the airport and
discounted that opinion immediately.

Around 5 pm, we called Howard Zucker, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of HHS. He put us in touch with the Public
Health Emergency Preparedness office. Lieutenant
Commander (LCMDR) Dunaway reported she was discussing
our offer of help with her superiors within the hour
and would get back to us. We did not hear again until
nearly midnight, when she called to say she was going
off shift and gave us a number to call at the HHS
command center in Washington.

Around 8 pm this was the situation: We had planes for
two flights at least. We had hospitals in Tennessee
and Chicago for 290 and 200 patients respectively. We
had two doctors for the plane. We needed landing slots
at the airport and patients for the planes. We needed
a contact on the ground.

Gore called Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta
and obtained two landing slots for Saturday. All we
needed now was a medical contact at the airport. I
contacted Casey Decker at the HHS Command Center, a
highly advanced, high tech center for tracking and
dealing with public health crises of all kinds. I
asked Decker for help contacting TRANSCOM, which was
running operations at the airport, as well as a
medical coordinator on the ground. Decker explained
they had not been able to maintain communications with
TRANSCOM on the ground or the medical staff. That was
troubling.

It was now after midnight early Saturday September
4th. I was home with my laptop and phone and
blackberry spread out around me on my bed. My wife,
wisely, chose to sleep in the guest bedroom to avoid
the phone calls. And then it began.

Starting right after midnight I began receiving calls
from FEMA, HHS, TRANSCOM and other groups whose
acronyms I still cannot explain. LCDR Kennedy from
FEMA called to understand what I was trying to do. I
told him. Fifteen minutes later Mimi Riley, Deputy
Director from NDMS called to beg me in a plaintive and
exhausted voice not to carry out this mission. She had
many reasons – you need doctors on the plane, Chicago
is too far from their home, how will we track the
patients, this is a military operation and we were not
military.

I explained to her that we had two doctors on the
plane one of whom was a retired Air Force Doctor who
had run the military hospital in Baghdad after the
invasion. I thought we could trust him to run an
airplane of people from New Orleans to Knoxville. We
were working with NDMS hospitals in Tennessee and
Chicago so they would have a good tracking system. (I
guess Mimi never heard of the Great Migration of
African Americans from New Orleans and the south to
Chicago after the flood of 1927 and during the
Depression. Many people from New Orleans are more at
home in Chicago than Houston. )

Mimi was unmovable. We were not military and that was
that. She tried to sound grateful for our intentions
but she was not going to have outsiders help. I even
offered to GIVE her the planes and the crews and the
hospitals and let her run it through her NDMS system
but she would have none of it. She asked me at least
to delay until noon the next day and I said I would
try.

I called Steve and told him to delay the planes. I
called Al. It was 2 a.m. in Nashville. He was planning
to leave for Dallas at 4 a.m. to meet the plane. I
told Tipper what was going on. She said, "Greg, you
can't delay it now. It's too late, the doctors are
flying in here to fly with Al to Dallas." Al got on
the phone and said we could not delay. I tried to
scare him. What if something went wrong with a patient
on the plane? What if the military did not cooperate
on the ground and no patients got on the plane? He
refused to budge. Col. LaFon could handle the patients
and Al would trust that when they landed they would
break through the resistance and succeed.

I called Mimi back and said we could not delay but we
would agree not to fly to Chicago. I called Steve back
to re-start the planes.

Over the next three hours (from 2a.m. to 5 a.m.) I was
called by an array of Majors and Lieutenant Commanders
telling me to stop. ("I don't mean to be rude, sir,
but you must not do this. You must stop this now.")
Major Webb from GPMRC (don't ask), Grant Meade from
ESF. Major Lindquist from TRANSCOM (at last!) all
telling me they would not cooperate and they did not
know how we had gotten permission to land. I never
mentioned Gore's name because no one ever asked me who
was paying for the flights or how we had come so far.

Finally at 5 a.m. Major Lindquist said if we landed he
would not put any patients on the plane and we should
expect no cooperation and there was no place to store
the plane so we would have to leave.

Through the night there was one voice supporting me.
Julie Soutuyo from FEMA had called around midnight
when she came on shift and asked what we were doing
because she had seen some report from our earlier
calls. I explained the whole thing to her. She tried
to put us in touch with TRANSCOM in New Orleans and
she checked on me all through the night to see how we
were doing. When I told her of the calls from the
military to stop us, she mentioned that she had
confronted the NDMS people on our behalf and made the
case that they should accept our help under these
circumstances but had been rebuffed. (The next day she
called me from home to see if we had succeeded.)

(Casey Decker at the HHS Command Center also tried to
help but he was unable to reach most of the people we
needed to speak to despite his best efforts.)

At 7 a.m. on Saturday September 3rd, the American
Airlines plane with Gore and the doctors and Gore's
son Albert left Dallas for New Orleans. They landed at
8:30, got off the plane and Col LaFon immediately
established contact with the Colonels running the
operation on the ground, most of whom he had served
with. He had trained many of the doctors on the scene.
He explained why they were there and the doctors began
a triage process to fill the plane. Two hours later
the plane was loaded and headed to Knoxville.

After speaking with Gore, I called ahead to Donna
Tidwell of TEMA who was running the operations there
and told her what to expect – about 20 patients
needing dialysis, many more needing insulin, a burn
victim and many people needing to be back on their
medications – and one boy with his dog. Forty of the
people on the plane were evacuees mistakenly put on
the plane by TSA but who might need medical attention
nonetheless. Knoxville was prepared to provide
shelters for them.

The plane's arrival in Knoxville was described by the
local paper as the "Mercy Plane" and the mayor and
many of the citizens turned out to help.

By now, it was too late to return to New Orleans, load
up and leave before dark and American Airlines refused
to have its personnel stay in New Orleans after dark.
Gore and the team headed to Dallas for the night.
Around midnight Saturday night, the FAA called
American airlines and pulled their landing slots for
Sunday saying only FEMA planes could fly in. Gore
called Mineta again who promised to honor our initial
agreement for two landing slots.

On Sunday morning Gore and the team landed in New
Orleans to a much improved scene. Many more patients
had been airlifted out after our flight and there were
only ten ambulatory patients for our plane so we took
120 evacuees with us to Chattanooga. The welcoming
reception in Chattanooga was so large that Gore said
it looked like there was an ambulance for everybody on
the plane.

We decided not to return to New Orleans because the
medical patients we could take had been helped. (We
could not take bedridden patients on stretchers on
this plane.) Gore said that on the second trip to New
Orleans, the doctors at the airport told him that the
evacuation of the first 90 ambulatory patients had
been the tipping point in their ability to adequately
care for the other bedridden patients. They also noted
that the military evacuations did not really pick up
steam until after we "motivated" them with our private
effort.

Of note:
Throughout the entire operation in Tennessee, EMS
operations in Chicago had stayed prepared to handle
patients or evacuees. None ever arrived because the
military did not want us to use Chicago. The
volunteers in Chicago were amazing in their desire to
help. Mayor Daly had been rebuffed earlier when he
offered a complete mobile hospital unit for the
airport and a tent city as well. Sen. Barack Obama
called Gore and asked how had Gore managed to land in
New Orleans when the Senator had been refused landing
rights to help.

None of the airlines involved required a contract or
any written guarantee of payment before sending their
planes and volunteer crews – the first time Steve
Davison had ever witnessed that in 15 years of
chartering planes for political campaigns and other
events. One official said if Gore promised to pay,
that was good enough for them.

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