New Digs...a move to a different office
Today was interesting...... I was reassigned to a different building this morning doing the IT work for a different group. It was an upgrade in responsibility [gulp] in that I have a tiny little kingdom of like 248 users and all the network responsibility for them all in a remote site.
My new group is DMORT... which stands for Disaster Morturary O.............. Response Team. These guys live and breathe taking care of victims of the disasters that did not survive. They are trying to identify a number of dead(there are still hundreds unidentified) by distinguishing characteristics, x-rays, dental records and DNA where possible. They are moving from a temporary morgue to a permanent one that has been constructed on ground that FEMA purchased in a tiny little town south west of Baton Rouge that was once famous for housing a leper colony. The temp morgue was an abandoned elementary school..... They housed people in classrooms, fed them in the cafeteria and entertained them in the gym. These people are still working virtually 24X7 to identify the dead. They housed the dead in Trailers with freezer units on them.. an endless line of hastily white painted trailers with deisel engines running freezer units. The autopsy room was a tent...... aparently doing that outside was a blessing but it created very unpleasant smells throughout the compound. I saw some of the effort to identify people ..... most that have been recovered are horribly disfigured ... this climate degrades them very quickly especially in the water. The teams trying to identify them are still sleeping on cots in barely ventilated abandoned classrooms and eating off paper plates to get this job done... makes me kind of ashamed I was complaining about the hotel I was staying at.
The new digs are very plush however. Nice wide parking lot, the buildings are made of the "tent" material that the roof of Denver International is made from. All the wires are run in the walls or in the ceiling, it has a dining room, a huge dorm for sleeping, a warehouse, an excercise room and a kind of TV/Great room with a wireless router for doing personal computing. My job gets tough when these foolk get here as they are bringing in computers of dubious heritage that have to be joined to a finicky network with all kinds of restrictions that doctors do not like to hear. My first mission is data retention to make sure nothing is lost. I am in this place to promote a "FEMA presence" to this and make sure our protocols are followed.. one of those situations guaranteed to grate somewhere... I will send pictures as I am allowed to. As you can imagine this is a very sensitive area with lots of privacy restrictions. The compound has 9 foot chain link fences with canvas tied to the fence to block views of anything. After the things I saw today, I doubt I will be making any "Dawn of the Dead" references again anytime soon.
My new group is DMORT... which stands for Disaster Morturary O.............. Response Team. These guys live and breathe taking care of victims of the disasters that did not survive. They are trying to identify a number of dead(there are still hundreds unidentified) by distinguishing characteristics, x-rays, dental records and DNA where possible. They are moving from a temporary morgue to a permanent one that has been constructed on ground that FEMA purchased in a tiny little town south west of Baton Rouge that was once famous for housing a leper colony. The temp morgue was an abandoned elementary school..... They housed people in classrooms, fed them in the cafeteria and entertained them in the gym. These people are still working virtually 24X7 to identify the dead. They housed the dead in Trailers with freezer units on them.. an endless line of hastily white painted trailers with deisel engines running freezer units. The autopsy room was a tent...... aparently doing that outside was a blessing but it created very unpleasant smells throughout the compound. I saw some of the effort to identify people ..... most that have been recovered are horribly disfigured ... this climate degrades them very quickly especially in the water. The teams trying to identify them are still sleeping on cots in barely ventilated abandoned classrooms and eating off paper plates to get this job done... makes me kind of ashamed I was complaining about the hotel I was staying at.
The new digs are very plush however. Nice wide parking lot, the buildings are made of the "tent" material that the roof of Denver International is made from. All the wires are run in the walls or in the ceiling, it has a dining room, a huge dorm for sleeping, a warehouse, an excercise room and a kind of TV/Great room with a wireless router for doing personal computing. My job gets tough when these foolk get here as they are bringing in computers of dubious heritage that have to be joined to a finicky network with all kinds of restrictions that doctors do not like to hear. My first mission is data retention to make sure nothing is lost. I am in this place to promote a "FEMA presence" to this and make sure our protocols are followed.. one of those situations guaranteed to grate somewhere... I will send pictures as I am allowed to. As you can imagine this is a very sensitive area with lots of privacy restrictions. The compound has 9 foot chain link fences with canvas tied to the fence to block views of anything. After the things I saw today, I doubt I will be making any "Dawn of the Dead" references again anytime soon.
posted by Steve Morse- Adventures in Disasters at 7:53 PM
2 Comments:
Sounds too much like DMort in Oklahoma when the Murrah Building was destroyed. Take time to relieve stress - it can creep up on you.
Thank you for keeping us informed about what you are doing - and how you are doing.
Being moved to this poisition is a compliment to your abilities.
I worked at the DMort doing security in the Oklahoma City bombing for one day and couldn't handle it. Creep up on you is an understatement. My commander was an angel and moved me.
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