He's a New York doctor who built there. And we had a door, you can see our door to the cemetery, did you see the door through there? I'll be focusing, you want me to focus on you, not him. New Orleans before the storm was truly a potpourri of people from all over the world, a fascinating place to drive around and explore, a fascinating group of people to get to know. I had lots of family and I grew to love New Orleans and everything about it in those days. As was my usual custom when a bad storm came, I would go to Charity Hospital and stay there if need be to help out because I was in charge of the LSU neurosurgery service. When Katrina came along, I packed up a few things that I thought I would need, some milk, some orange juice, some fruit and went to Charity the night before it hit. I must have fallen asleep, I don't know when. I was awakened at 4 a.m. by a huge bladder and what it was, the Venetian blinds had been sucked out and I remember seeing through the gusts of wind, the window sucking in and then going back out and that was happening on both halls. I got Danny, I got Richard. I'm Richard Roberts, I am a pediatric neurosurgeon at Cook Children's Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. I did my residency or most of it up to Hurricane Katrina at LSU in New Orleans at Charity Hospital with Dr. David Klein as my chairman. Medicine was reduced to pre-turn-of-the-century medicine. The only available machine was a thermometer. We lost electricity very early that morning, I guess about 6 a.m. We lost water pressure. We had oxygen. We had toilets for a while, but then with no ability to flush them, they overran and the stench in Charity became horrible. We had 33 patients that we were caring to on our unit. I had wonderful, totally dedicated nursing personnel. They just put in the work 24 hours a day. The last resident we trained at LSU before Katrina was Gabe Tender and he was isolated over at Hotel Dew because there was a lot of water. I'm Gabe Tender. I'm the last LSU resident to graduate before Katrina. Dr. Klein, or the boss, what we used to call him, was always in the middle of things. He was always the first to jump when there was something needed. During Katrina, all of a sudden, we're surrounded by water and we have all these patients in the hospital and Dr. Klein just took over. We'd have to take turns beating the patient like that, but harder than that, and then rubbing them with our knuckles and our fists to get their skin real red, and then the towels with the soaked alcohol because that's how you best exchange heat. Waking up on Tuesday and looking out the window toward the lake and seeing nothing but water as far as the eye can see. We were hoping we would go out with our patients, but the Black Hawks left and didn't come back. My supervisor eventually told me there might be a smaller helicopter coming. Fourteen hours later, we were evacuated. Later Saturday of that week, and I went to Houston to the Ellington Air Force Base, and my wife could come and meet me there. Initially, we did our teaching up in Baton Rouge. They had no CT scan, they had no MRI scan, anesthesia was limited, so there was only some things we could do, and eventually, fortunately, we came back to New Orleans. Charity Hospital, of course, was declared a total disaster, but moreover, the state and the federal government decided it couldn't be rehabilitated. The new state hospital, University Hospital, is located between Canal Street and Tulane Avenue on more than three city blocks. It's huge. It cost $1.65 billion, I understand. It's beautiful. With Katrina, we lost over a thousand people, so evacuation remained a problem at that point for New Orleans. You know, can you imagine sending out recruitment advertisements in December of 2005 to come to an institution where we didn't know exactly where you were working? We had two people who did want to come, and I would be the last person to interview them and not ask them, why do you want to come? I want to help. I want to be part of rebuilding. I love that idea, and I think I'm going to love New Orleans. Those were the responses I got. Guess what? We took those two people, despite their backgrounds, which I won't bother you with, right off the bat. That's the kind of timber we wanted to rebuild our residency. I guess I'd like to be remembered for service, at least service to neurosurgery. I was known for nerve and working on nerve, brachial plexus, major nerve injuries, and so gave a lot of courses. Since I retired in 2008, I washed dishes at our church for all of our functions that are social because it's as close to the operating room as I can get. Dr. Klein, I think, is the person who made me who I am. He's the one who gave me a chance with residency, and more than mentoring me through, fathered me through. I have to say, he was a father figure to me, and I worship him. And it had wonderful grapefruit after Katrina, and now I think the vines from the cemetery have taken it over, you know.

Dr. David Klein

Hurricane Katrina

Charity Hospital

medical care

rebuilding efforts