Frist finds disarray in treatment of storm victims

But what he found among the thousands needing treatment was a rescue effort in chaos: patients sleeping on luggage conveyors, teams of nurses who didn’t know each other’s names and a total communication breakdown.

“In the airport right now there is no communication between one unit and another. No coordination with how many people will be coming in the door 10 minutes later,” he told the Associated Press by phone. “That’s sort of the most disappointing thing. It’s probably the greatest failure.”

Frist, a surgeon, left Washington around 4:30 a.m. Saturday on his private plane. He spent most of the day helping to treat victims at Louis Armstrong International Airport and the New Orleans Convention Center. He spoke by phone from a helicopter shuttling him between the two, taking a 45-minute tour above the flooded streets of downtown.

He also said the federal government had acted too slowly in dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“Given the escalation of catastrophe that occurred over the first three days, absolutely I would have liked to see the federal government respond quicker, more rapidly, with better command and control centers and much improved communication,” Frist said.

“I’m not going to get into finger pointing now. I did call for oversight hearings — I wouldn’t have done that if I weren’t concerned. We’ve got to do better.”

The Senate Majority Leader said he will spend the rest of the day in New Orleans and plans to sleep tonight in Nashville. He plans to return to the Gulf Coast Sunday with Samaritan’s Purse, an organization run by the Rev. Franklin Graham, to work in storm-ravaged areas of Mississippi and Alabama, as well as returning with supplies to New Orleans.

Frist plans to be back in Washington by the time the Senate reconvenes on Tuesday, and said the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts will go forward as planned.

The senator spent the day treating diabetics for low blood sugar and dealing with cases of high blood pressure and dehydration. Though he is a surgeon by training, there was no need to perform surgery on Saturday, he said.

Despite reports of a nurse having been stabbed at the airport the day before, Frist said he was not worried about his security. “I feel 100 percent safe. It’s a lot of people working together,” he said.

At a triage unit set up by a crowded underpass, Frist met two nurses. “I introduced myself as a doctor. Without even knowing who I was, they talked about the last four days as volunteers.

“They ultimately ended up being the two main coordinators night and day, sleeping two hours a night on the ground. (They had) probably either treated or coordinated somewhere around 7,000 or 8,000 people going through that underpass,” he said. Frist said they had been thrown together by circumstances and were working themselves to exhaustion. “They didn’t know each other’s last names,” he said.

Frist called the situation on the ground a “total communication breakdown.” There were no backup systems in place to deal with a loss of digital communications, he said. “One snafu means the whole system goes down.”

Nonetheless, he said progress was being made. A line of patients at the convention center three blocks long Saturday morning was down to one block by the time he left.

Frist moved around with the help of the Knox County, Tenn., Sheriff’s Office, who had several helicopters in the area, he said.

He also surveyed the breached levees by air, as well as several area hospitals. He said the sight of the flooded downtown and the waste along the New Orleans Riverwalk Marketplace was “devastating.” He predicted it would take more than a year to clean up the city.

“That Riverwalk I’ve probably been on 8 or 9 times,” he said. “It is devastating. But it will come back alive.”