| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
Water Crisis in Nursing Homes
00:02:14
|
|
| And so you've warned the nation. | |
| What was it like to speak to the government? | |
| Frustrating. | |
| Let me share. | |
| You mentioned the hospital. | |
| Yes. | |
| A lot of what I put into the book are basic things and autobiographical. | |
| As I started working on this book, my father a proud veteran of World War II, gave six years of his life to this country. | |
| He was a cavalry trooper, an actual mounted cavalry trooper. | |
| Dad was fighting out the last weeks of his life, and he was going out like the sergeant that he was. | |
| Terrible storm came up and blew out the power grid of Black Mountain. | |
| I got a call from the nursing home that they needed help. | |
| I drove up there through this driving, terrible storm. | |
| They had no water. | |
| They had no water. | |
| And I went and I got 25 gallons of water from an emergency supply depot, which became difficult because they were passing out one-gallon containers. | |
| And some people might, you know, Black Mountain is a peaceful little town, but people were getting upset already. | |
| It's like, why are you getting 25 gallons of water? | |
| But the part in the book that you reference is in the novel, the main character goes in to get his father-in-law out of the nursing home four or five days into the crisis. | |
| And the horror of what has happened. | |
| Think about a nursing home where there's no water, there's no sanitation, there's no refrigeration, the medical supply system has dropped down so that people, if you are familiar with nursing homes, a lot of medications are delivered there only on a daily basis. | |
| So if the grid goes down two or three days later, your grandfather, who is in the final stages of fighting cancer, no longer has pain medication. | |
| I get called in to the nursing home. | |
|
Sitting And Watching Him Die
00:00:43
|
|
| My father is on oxygen, respirator, and I am watching the emergency lights, and I turn to the nurse and I asked her, what happens if the emergency lighting system goes off? | |
| What about oxygen for my father? | |
| They said, well, we have some pressurized oxygen bottles. | |
| I said, suppose it goes for a day or two. | |
| Then what? | |
| Have this squeeze ball that you put over his face. | |
| Then I asked, you mean I will sit here and keep pushing air into my father until I become so exhausted I have to stop and sit back and watch him die. | |