I’m happy to see the Occupy movement is alive and well, but I’m disturbed to see how chaotic and sporadic the recovery aid is from the “official” aid organizations. This story is heartbreaking.
Westfahl headed upstairs in the dark to the tenth floor. He encountered a woman wrapped in a babushka who gestured that she was both deaf and mute. Through pantomime, Westfahl determined that she had water, and she opened the door of her refrigerator to show him the contents. “She doesn’t have much food at all,” he said quietly.
Benham and Fidget talked to a Chinese woman who spoke little English. She was “okay,” she said, “but maybe person … ” she pointed them inside, where an elderly man lay in bed. Benham checked his vital signs, and they scanned the room for medications. “He’s got nitro — so he’s a heart patient, he’s got heart disease, that’s for anti-clotting, he has episodes — this might even be a hospice case,” Benham said. Out in the stairwell, he said, “In New Orleans, that patient would have been evacuated, and would have died in the evacuation.” It was better for him to remain at home for now.
It was growing dark. Piser and Westfahl left to answer one last dispatch call for a cancer patient who needed a daily dose of chemo. Fidget duct-taped a sign on the outside of the building saying that every floor had been checked by Occupy Sandy for urgent needs. “It comes down to the fact that they got these knocks,” said Lederman, the nurse. “I think it could be a psychological disaster — at the very least — if nobody at all came for six days.”
