Responding to Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, prestationed disaster teams from across the nation, including several volunteers from the UCSD Medical Center, flocked to the affected areas early this month to assist with emergency relief efforts thoughtout the region.

Disaster Medical Assistance Team San Diego, staffed by members of the Hillcrest-based medical center, lent their expertise to aid victims in Louisiana and elsewhere in the nation’s disaster-ridden southeastern region.

“DMATs are stationed all throughout the country,” said DMAT San Diego Commander Dr. Jake Jacoby, a member of the UCSD Medical Center. “When city, county and state disaster needs cannot be met, the federal government will dispatch teams like ours to the area in need.”

Jacoby said the disaster teams were prestationed in cities such as Baton Rouge and Atlanta, where they awaited dispatch to areas throughout the southeastern United States.

Jacoby, like many other members of the team from UCSD, has prior experience in disaster situations. He, as well as the recent trip’s Operations Chief Thérèse Rymer, both assisted during the Hurricane Katrina relief effort in 2005.

Although the volunteers often apply their previous relief-effort experiences to the next disaster, specific circumstances can never be predicted.
“There is no real way to compare,” Rymer said. “Each situation is different — we expect the unexpected.”

One particular contrast that Jacoby noted compared to his previous relief-effort experiences, however, was with the level of anticipation that surrounded this trip, as opposed to the relatively slow response offered during Hurricane Katrina.

Jacoby said that government efforts were both much better prepared this time around, and that a greater number of residents followed local evacuation orders.
He said that though the number of people who decided not to evacuate was much lower than the 60,000 to 80,000 who remained in their homes during Katrina, the number who did choose to ignore evacuation warnings during this latest disaster was still unfortunately high.

“It’s always tragic when people assume that because they escaped the wrath of the last hurricane, it will be the same this time,” Jacoby said. “That assumption usually ends in people becoming stranded, injured or killed.”

The team was initially put on standby for Hurricane Gustav in August. Upon arrival, Gustav had already wreaked havoc on the country’s southern states and medical workers found themselves assisting with the aftermath of Gustav rather than standing by for Ike’s arrival.

On Sept. 10, they moved into Houma, La., taking over for an Oregon DMAT crew treating those who fell victim to Gustav.

“Many hospitals were closed and evacuated in the area,” Jacoby said. “The treatment site was set up in the parking lot of a grocery store.”

He said that the general goal of the trip was to augment hospital emergency room traffic and to ensure that real emergencies were given precedence.

The night following the team’s arrival, tropical storm warnings sounded the arrival of Ike, leaving the team no choice but to evacuate.

“We were working and living in tents, so there was no way we could wait out the storm,” Rymer said. “This is probably the first time I’ve experienced two storms so close together.”

After Ike made landfall, the crew was flown to Lake Charles — Houma was later flooded by Ike.

“We were placed in charge of caring for patients flown in by search-and-rescue teams,” Jacoby said. “There were also a lot of refugees coming in from Texas, because Lake Charles is very near the state border.”

He added that three trainloads of 1,000 people each were relocated to the Lake Charles treatment area, seeking refuge from the storm.

“The hurricane area this time was so wide,” Rymer said. “This is why we did a lot of location hopping — we were on call wherever we were needed.”

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike were both Category 4, with wind intensities peaking at around 150 mph. Gustav caused 138 deaths and up to $15 billion in damage, according to Weather Underground.

The costs from Ike are estimated at $27 billion with 145 deaths, making it the third most costly hurricane in recorded history, after Hurricanes Katrina in 2005 and Andrew in 1992.