Hello all,   This will be my last official Gustav update.  The Convention Center shelter is now closed.  A Buddhist Charity came in to help with debit cards for gasoline, and the State sent a bus to load those who were bussed.  Transicare and Adapt Crisis services stayed until there was no more work to do.

Overall, I have to say that this went amazingly well, due to a combination of a lot of hard work, people willing to cooperate and step in to fill in the gaps when needed.  I was quite impressed with how well the entire operation went (from the Red Cross to the City’s response, Dallas Fire and Rescue, the Police, Texas Guard, OEM, the Medical providers, and the mental health community).  It was a truly amazing group effort

That being said, we were also blessed by a relatively small number (as compared to Hurricane Katrina) of evacuees.  This whole ordeal has been a great learning experience, and has given me several ideas for how to improve future large scale evacuee response.  I would PLEASE like to hear from those of you who were there in terms of what you thought went well and where we can make appropriate changes to our response to allow for the flexibility to respond to a much larger situation.

I do want to thank EVERYBODY who worked down at the Convention Center (and any other shelter site for that matter).  You guys did a great job.  People were calm and professional, which had a tremendously positive impact on the people whom we were serving.

I especially want to thank all of the people who were down on the floor helping out (and PLEASE forgive me if I do not mention you by name).  Dr. Jenkins beat me by several hours on the initial response.  Adapt Crisis Services and Adapt of Texas were outstanding, and they along with Transicare provided (without any hesitation or complaint) 24/7 onsite coverage.  ValueOptions NorthSTAR (especially Jack Szczepanowski and Sandy Potter) were there multiple times making sure that we received whatever we needed to provide care.  Dr. Baker and Dallas MetroCare Services were on-site and also offering their significant resources for the mental health as well as the special needs population.

Dr’s Tirado and Patel were very helpful with a few of the clients needing Methadone and or detox.

Dr. Ray Fowler was tireless in the same green T-Shirt he wore through the Katrina operations (He insists it is regularly laundered), and really was wonderful in terms of keeping the operation organized smoothly, and very much brought mental health services to the table so that we could coordinate more effectively with the medical care, and to be more aware of the overall operational situation.  Accurate operational information is crucial to determining what level of resources we needed during this time.

The residents and faculty at UT Southwestern Psychiatry Department were great in terms of being down at the DCC and at volunteering to be there.

Agnes Hamilton (my admin) and Janie Metzinger of MHA were amazing in their scheduling of services.  It would have been a total mess without their work.

Nancy Schierding, Vernell Brown, the entire staff at the Parkland Psych ER, who were already getting slammed before the evacuation, and received several people on an APOWW from the Convention Center.

Dr’s Garrett, Ghose, Pieper, Sayed, Butler, Gautam, and Islam at Parkland and Green Oaks who had to step up and cover for my not being at either ER during this time.

Also to Dr. Tyler who covered the last evening at the DCC so I could go back to the Psych ER to help out there.

There are many more people to thank, and I apologize for sounding like a lame academy award speech, and I sincerely apologize if I did not name you, but feel quite strongly that it is very important to recognize how MANY people it takes to make something like this go smoothly, and how amazing it is that so many people from so many agencies can make something like this work so well.

Thank you also to the many, many people who called to offer assistance.  I cannot tell you how calming it is to realize that you have multiple layers of backup for a situation like this.  I can state very clearly, when you are in the middle of an operation like this, you cannot help but multiply the magnitude of the operation by many different factors (all greater than 1) to understand how easily the need could have been 5, 10, 20+ times greater than it was.  It is very comforting to know that there are many lines of reserve.

Again thank you for all of your hard work and flexibility and cooperation.Frank Webster, MD
Medical Director,  Psychiatric Emergency Services, Parkland Memorial Hospital/UT Southwestern

Medical Director,  Integrated Crisis Services, Green Oaks Hospital