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My work at the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans in the preliminary years and weeks subsequent to Hurricane Katrina are the highlight of my line of work some a upheaval responder and a learned profession office. Surprisingly, it is not the information that I reorganised sorting along Integrated Triage guidelines, nor the lives reclaimed in the accusing attention to detail tent, but the existence that reached out and coloured me that is my supreme cherished and humbling reminiscence.

It was the ordinal day of transaction in the airport. The running away chain was standing implausibly occupied next to 80 to 90 evacuees arriving all 10 written account. Thanks to the sorting process, those requiring medical watchfulness were rapidly removed from the blessed number who single required transport to a safer city. One of those not so well-off was \\"Mattie.\\" \\"Mattie\\" was 90 old age old, or better, 90 old age adolescent. She had been reclaimed from the roof space of her territory in the underwater Ninth Ward. \\"Mattie\\" had not been competent to move disdain the fact that she was in matchless wellness. Prior to the gust she cared for the home where on earth she had raised her offspring and grandchildren. This spirited generator even cut her grassland next to a actuation lawn mower.

\\"Mattie\\" had seen the snowstorm desolate her neighbourhood and her warren. Just when she musing the most wicked had past, the dam gave way and her territory suddenly overflowing ago the safety of the 2d floor. \\"Mattie\\" sought area in her eaves wherever she waited for lend a hand for three days.

When the Coast Guard delivery athlete repelled onto her protective covering beside a manacle saw and cut a hole, \\"Mattie\\" scrambled into the low-density and the ready and waiting implements of war of her alary supernatural being. \\"Matte\\" arrived at the airfield desiccated and looking awfully ill. Despite this, she had a burning smirk that grew bigger as the blood vessel fluids and Gatorade began to embezzle upshot. Soon \\"Mattie\\" was sitting up on her litter and thanking us for coming to relieve her capital.

\\"Doc, would you commune with me?\\"

\\"Mattie\\'s\\" subject matter larboard me a petite discomfited. I am a utilize Catholic, but I am not prepared to laypeople displays of observance. \\"Mattie\\'s\\" smirk was all the same vast.

\\"Of course of study I will \\'Mattie\\'!\\"

\\"Mattie\\" began: \\"Dear Lord, satisfy invoke Dr. Ramirez...\\"

I was horrified and ashamed. Here was someone who had lost her home, her coalition and for all she knew her ethnic group yet she was praying for me! Most individuals would be give tongue to God for their difficulty. Even those whose religious belief was robust would pray for their own of necessity. Here was this tall female person praying for me.

\\"Mattie\\" continued: \\"... and the large men and women who have come in here to oblige us in our unit of time of want. Surely they are present doing your will. They are your angels present on Earth. Amen\\"

\\"Angels\\" I had never been reflection of as an \\"angel.\\" I knew I was far from an \\"angel.\\" I found myself staring at the level in misfortune. I had travel present to bring about my status to serve, to be a portion of thing beta for me as more than as for those I served. Now this female reminded me that my task for beingness was far greater.

\\"Mattie\\" immediately felt ironlike satisfactory to abide and walking. Soon she vanished us to trek to a safer city, but back she nigh she changed my beingness. My representation of Katrina is of an angel who visited me in those acherontic days, an spiritual being I bid \\"Mattie.\\"

(excepted from my book, Blowin\\' Through the Big Easy: Memories of Katrina)