Absoluteley Maddening.

We haven't left yet. Actually, if I truly end up going, it's not going to be until the weekend. But the dog teams haven't left yet, and let me tell you why...

There's no where to put them. When we ready for a mission such as this, it's imperative to not go down there and become part of the problem. At minimum, I can't send my teams in if we can't provide them with clean water (heck it doesn't even have to be cold...we're just going for non-toxic), they need a quiet place to rest after their day is done to regroup and debrief...debriefing is a big deal for something like this. With the destruction and the lives lost, and what the teams will see, they need to be able to debrief with the team to expel the images that they'll have in their minds and hearts into words and get them out.

Right now, none of those things exist. There's still live wires down all over the place, there's no water, there's plenty of death and destruction, of which there aren't even estimates of what they're looking at, there are entire families missing, there are parts of families missing, there are entire families dead and there are parts of families dead.

For me, this has been a really hard realization. I'm used to being able to go in, start coordinating, getting people doing something (anything that is part of the solution) and just working down the scale towards the ultimate goal. I don't know how to do that with this. It's so massive, it's so widespread, and it's so completely heartbreaking to me.

And, for just a second while I'm running through the emotions, I'm pissed too. I'm pissed to read things like conversations overheard of college students "Let's find a place to watch it. It'll be cool." I'm pissed about this because it's those people that my friends and fellow SAR people are now frantically, desperately trying to find.

So let me recap: FEMA needs our help. NOLA needs our help. But, we can't get in there. And even if we did get in there, while we'd be useful for a good 8-12 hours, then we're part of the problem, and potentially could be causing more harm than good by putting our teams in danger. The dogs tire. People tire.

We're more than likely going to still go, just not until there's a better idea of what the heck is going on down there. The statistics should start to pour in either sometime today or tomorrow, possibly even Thursday.

From my heart: God Bless the people who are trapped. God Speed to the people who have perished, and God DAMN Katrina.

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