Alabama Lions Sight Manager, Lion Julie Beckham, and newly hired Mobile Screening Unit driver, Lion J.C. Elsberry, recently caravaned with UAB and Vision Service Plan personnel to deliver the ALSCA Mobile Screening Unit trailer to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, which was completely ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.
On Thursday, October 6th, the team departed from Birmingham, and arrived in Bay St. Louis late Thursday evening. After dropping off the unit at Hancock Medical Center, the crew drove back to Mobile to spend the night, and then back to Bay St. Louis early the following morning to begin set-up.
In the daylight, the surroundings were very sobering. "The entire town is completely destroyed," said Lion Julie Beckham. "Most of the residents seemed to have left, but the ones that stayed were just walking around, still in shock."
Friday morning, Dr. Stan Newman, a local optometrist, came to see the unit. Both his practice in Bay St. Louis and his home in Hattiesburg were destroyed by the hurricane. Dr. Newman and others will be using the unit as an office to treat patients while their offices are being rebuilt.
Although it has been almost two months since the hurricane, there is still much work to be done and many services to be provided. "We knew very little about this area," said Kim Crimmins, a disaster relief employee of Sacramento-based VSP. "We told ourselves, we want to help, now where can we go?"
"To date the effort has gone really well," said fellow VSP employee, Doug Ljung, two weeks after the unit was placed in Bay St. Louis. "We have seen over 200 patients and we now have another mobile unit in New Orleans. Thanks to the partnership of the Lions to get us started, we are now locating other sites to provide services throughout Mississippi and Louisiana including a 1,200 person cruise ship that is housing evacuees. We are working 16 hour days as we plan for each day which is busier than the previous one. We are hoping to see a couple of thousand people, or more, before we are through."
Alabama Lions Sight's mobile unit is scheduled to be in Bay St. Louis for 30 days.
