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Located in the northern part of St. Tammany, Folsom is a working-class community. Here, thousands of downed trees blocked roadways and cut power, leaving the 600 residents desperate for food, water, gas and medicine.Most people around Folsom rode out the storm in their homes. Now they were queued up before me. They were hungry, hot, thirsty and worried. Those whose homes had been crushed were left to wonder at the random nature of a disaster that spared a neighbor's house just ten yards away. Gathered around our ERV at a derelict Mobil station, they complained angrily that the Red Cross hadn't shown up until now.
Debbie Jackson, a drawn, tearful woman, told how her husband had suffered a blood clot during the hurricane; so many trees were in the roadway that her neighbors had to form a chain-saw brigade to cut their way clear to the hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery. Ervin Guichard, whose diabetic mother was wheelchair bound, kept trying to call his daughter in New Orleans, but, he explained, "the 504 area code is nonexistent."
Then there were the Carpenters, Elaine and Dell. On Elaine's forearm was a medical contraption I'd never seen before -- two sharp metal pins about nine inches apart boring down through her flesh and into the bone.
"We've lost everything," Dell said. "Everything. Our home is destroyed."
"Did you injure your arm before or after the hurricane?" I asked Elaine.
"Before," she replied through tears.
She told me her doctor had prescribed a pain drug, but when she brought it home, it turned out to be for cholesterol. Katrina arrived before she could iron out the mistake, and now here she was, five days later, in agony, standing in line to receive a Styrofoam tray with a serving of beans and rice and two bottles of water.
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