OSN New York faculty members feel hurricane’s effects

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R. Bruce Wallace III, MD, said he was the third generation in his family to be trained in the New Orleans area.

NEW YORK — Two members of the faculty at the Ocular Surgery News Symposium had direct ties to the region affected by Hurricane Katrina. They shared comments here regarding the disaster and its effects on areas with which they have a special kinship.

OSN Cataract Surgery Section Member Priscilla E. Perry Arnold, MD, moderator of a session on cataract and implant challenges, spoke on behalf of the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

“As a former resident of Louisiana I’d like just … to express gratitude to everyone who has been so generous and continues to be generous during this tragedy in the states of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana,” she said. “Our country once again has shown the concern and generosity that we feel for each other.”

R. Bruce Wallace III, MD, OSN ASCs Section Editor, also on the faculty at the meeting, practices and resides in Alexandria in central Louisiana, where many evacuees from New Orleans were sent after the hurricane.

“I know a lot of us are concerned about what is happening in New Orleans and in the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” he said. “My father, grandfather and I all trained in medical school in New Orleans, and my wife also went school at Newcomb College. We have a lot of close ties to New Orleans, and it is very difficult for us to experience this.”

Arnold OSN NY 2005
Priscilla E. Perry Arnold, MD, was one of two faculty members who spoke about her direct ties to the region affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Dr. Wallace noted that both he and Dr. Arnold attended Tulane University.

He said many people in Louisiana consider New Orleans the flagship city of the state, “just like the whole country considers New York its flagship city.”

Gulf Coast residents are optimistic that they and their beloved city will “pull through this,” he said, “but it’s been really tough.”

Despite the advance warnings preceding Hurricane Katrina, “those who are used to hurricanes in Louisiana were surprised” by the ferocity of the storm, Dr. Wallace said.

“I was in New Orleans when Hurricane Camille hit in 1969,” he said, “and there were no evacuations.”

Camille was a category 5 hurricane with 200-mile-per-hour winds, on the same path that Katrina took, he said. Camille did not cause “nearly the destruction on the Mississippi Gulf Coast that happened with this one,” Dr. Wallace said.

He said he believes residents ignored initial evacuation orders for Hurricane Katrina “because they didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”

Dr. Wallace thanked physician attendees and others for the support they have given to his part of the world.

“We’re probably going to need a little bit more of that,” he said. “I hope we will have the power to have future meetings in New Orleans.”

The American Academy of Ophthalmology has chosen New Orleans as its host city twice in the past 5 years, and the meeting had been scheduled to be held there again in November 2007.