Arrival at Stennis

After an escorted trip to Stennis, we arrived to find the nasa facility being used to shelter folks who had lost everything. One of the first people we met had nothing but her two kids and her parrot. One of the relief worker's entire villege is gone, completely wiped out. The halls of this nasa facility were filled with person after person airlifted from New Orleans and surrounding areas.

Once we checked in, no easy task in the confusion, we were staged again for unloading. We were split up with one truck going to a warehouse to be unloaded by forklift, and the other two to the Stennis airport. From here the water was slingloaded directly to blackhawk helicopters for airlifting direct to people on the ground. The choppers literally are putting water into the hands of the thirsty. Envision people on the ground with signs that say help and choppers coming in with water slung underneath. This is exactly what is happening.

Interestingly enough, we had a chance to look at the traffic sheet and talked to people on the ground who said while the first couple days 70 to 80 trucks of water arrived each day. Yesterday 4. Today we believe we represented well over 100 percent of the water as of 3:30 pm. Mind you the nature of the supply change is like an accordian, we helped out immensly during a lull period.