KATRINA DISASTER More Ohioans join relief effort

Columbus paramedics are shocked at what they're finding in New Orleans.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A growing number of Ohio residents are among those involved in search-and-rescue and recovery efforts in the states hit by Hurricane Katrina, and some have a personal stake in the outcome.
Randy King, of Mason, left Friday for Louisiana. He is trying to locate his mother-in-law, Rita Callhover, who apparently is somewhere in Kentwood, La. The 78-year-old woman depends on oxygen and shows characteristics of dementia, her family said.
Callhover was evacuated from Belle Chase, La., with other nursing home residents and moved north to a Baptist church near Baton Rouge, but King doesn't know the name of the church.
Callhover's daughter, Clare King, found about 20 Baptist churches in the Kentwood area through the Internet but couldn't reach any of them by phone.
"Everything is a dead end, and that is very frustrating, especially in a world that we live in today where we can get immediate answers with the Internet and cell phones," she said.
Headed to Baton Rouge
Deanna Alsup, of Mount Healthy, also headed to the Baton Rouge area Friday. She planned to pick up her brother and nine to 13 extended family members who had made it out of New Orleans to Baton Rouge.
Alsup was accompanied by the administrator of the nursing home where she works and by the director of nursing at a sister nursing home. They left in a van filled with water and supplies to deliver to hurricane victims in Louisiana.
Eleven firefighters in the Hamilton County Urban Search and Rescue Task Force aren't looking for family members but are doing what they can to help in Gulfport, Miss.
"Their spirits are high, and they are saving people," said B.J. Jetter, deputy commissioner of the county's search team. "But there are also a lot of dead people and dead animals. They are finding issues with snakes and contaminated water. The guys are telling me their spirits are high, but they are exhausted, and hydration is important to them."
The rescue workers spend between 18 and 20 hours a day searching the rubble for any signs of life and use spray paint to note the number of bodies inside buildings, he said.
ODNR officers
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources announced Sunday that it would send 25 officers to the New Orleans area for search-and-rescue and recovery efforts. And an additional 160 Army National Guard soldiers left Sunday to support law enforcement officials in the stricken states.
A Butler County sheriff's office convoy that included four tractor-trailer rigs full of bottled drinking water, personal hygiene items and other supplies left Hamilton on Thursday for the southern states hit by Katrina. A crew of deputies went along to help law enforcement efforts in the disaster areas.
About 30 Coast Guard members based from the Great Lakes region left from Cleveland on Friday with food, rescue gear and 750 gallons of water. They were headed to Belle Chasse, La., near New Orleans. They planned to man search-and-rescue boats to help rescue any survivors or recover bodies.
A team of paramedics from Columbus has been in the Gulf Coast area for days. They had been treating flood victims in a makeshift New Orleans hospital but drove to Louis Armstrong International Airport on Friday to start treating people there.
"You wouldn't believe the hell we just walked into," said James Teague, a paramedic for Medstat ambulance.
They said there were little or no medical supplies, and the group is running out of the supplies it had.
Teague said that the stench was so strong that some volunteers have fled.
Shocking conditions
Helicopters flying patients in for treatment were stopped Friday when President Bush arrived. But the president didn't enter the airport, which swelled with armed guards during his visit, Teague said.
Jason Castleman, a medical technician with Medstat, was shocked by conditions at the airport.
"If you can fly thousands of troops into Iraq in a matter of hours, why can't you fly a whole group of people out of New Orleans?" asked Jason Castleman, a Medstat medical technician.
"I feel embarrassed, and I feel bad. We're supposed to be the United States -- the home of the free -- banding together to help out."
Medics from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton are working in New Orleans. They airlifted 105 medical patients from the disaster area to Nashville, Tenn., on Saturday. It was the third day of medical evacuation airlifts by the 445th Airlift Wing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.