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Ed Yeates ReportingPublic Health is calling it a nightmare. Every conceivable organism is cooking in the toxic waters of New Orleans. Health watchdogs say the risk for disease and infection is increasing hour by hour.
As if New Orleans hasn't had enough already, this latest scenario could be the most insidious yet to come. In all this water, stagnating and softening soil in a city that was already below sea level, things are growing and growing rapidly.
Dr. George White, University of Utah Public Health: "It's a recipe for increased risk not only for injury, but disease in every respect."
Viruses, bacteria -- Dr. George White at the University of Utah says they couldn't ask for a more lucrative environment to grow in. With warm temperatures and high humidity, the city is literally sitting in a wet cauldron filled with raw sewage, chemicals, submerged cars, and all kinds of other things. Like some laboratory experiment, it's as if New Orleans has been encapsulated inside a petri dish, brewing an abundance of disease causing organisms.
Dr. White: "Any cut that anyone had a break in the skin, there's an increased risk that they will have a significant infection."
Volunteer health care teams from around the country, including here in Utah, are about to walk into all this, hoping to treat if not prevent more injury and death.
At the university hospital's command center, plans are already underway to put together special trauma teams that would go to Louisiana when that call comes through.
Colleen Connelly, University of Utah Emergency Preparedness: "We would take physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, messengers, housekeeping."
Essentially, everybody needed, on a smaller scale, to staff one of FEMA's portable hospitals. Keeping people healthy, keeping them on their feet -- Colleen Connelly says it's a priority, especially for the long road ahead.
Colleen Connely: "We know the recovery is going to take months and months. They're going to be dealing with this for a long time in Louisiana."
But the healing must begin now. Connelly says volunteers will have to get lots of immunizations and preventive vaccines before they go.
