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CARING COMMUNITIES

NJ nurse found many severe needs in Puerto Rico

Chelsea Senior Living
Dawn Shourt, a New Jersey registered nurse, with a horse while taking a water break in Catano, Puerto Rico.

FANWOOD - Registered nurse Dawn Shourt left post-hurricane Puerto Rico with a heavy heart after a one-week trip going door to door looking to help survivors with medicine, treatment and surgery.

That's because she saw desperate people living on the edge in a place where local distribution of basics such as food and water was not happening.

"I feel bad for them," Shourt said. "I don't know how the island is supposed to rebuild. The military has to go in there. It's bad."

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A young girl with a dog in Puerto Rico. The girl's mother let volunteers use her bathroom. The volunteers gave the girl and other children candy they took out of their compound.

Shourt, who serves as regional director of health services at Chelsea Senior Living in Fanwood, said she visited the home of a husband and wife who are in their 70s.

“The husband was bed-bound," she said. "The floorboards were so thin and wet we thought we were going to fall through. She had so much water still under her house that catfish this big were living under there. We said to her, ‘You have to leave.’ And she said ‘Oh no, I’m waiting for the government.’”

Scattered debris and building damage in a remote area of Puerto Rico.

But Shourt saw no government at work. Instead, she saw volunteers from all across the continental U.S. — doctors, nurses, union workers in her group — purchasing supplies on their own and going door to door looking to offer help residents.

“I saw the American Red Cross giving out food and water,” she said. “I saw FDNY and the military. Didn’t see FEMA.”

Dawn Shourt (back row, second from left), a registered nurse from New Jersey, with other volunteers during her recent trip to Puerto Rico.

Shourt traveled with a group of volunteers organized by several unions. They were able to fly into San Juan and saw first hand evidence of desperation among the residents as they drove out of the airport.
“There were people from the community standing there, cheering for us, crying, there to greet us,” she recalled.

She said the accommodations were makeshift.
“I slept in the Roberto Clemente baseball field locker room, on a cot,” she said. “Communal showers. We had running water but they shut it off towards the end because of reports it was contaminated with scabies and broken glass.”
She traveled on foot with a group of 11 other volunteers including other nurses, a doctor and members of various unions. They stayed together for safety.
“We were going into the communities every day, basically knocking on doors or talking to people who lived there to see who they thought needed a nurse or doctor or medications. There were tons of trees down, palm trees snapped in
half, houses in terrible condition.

Two men in Catano, Puerto Rico, holding boxes of bandages for their wounds.

She said the greatest need was for medications.

"People couldn’t get them. They couldn’t get refills because they didn’t have transportation. If they were able to get to the pharmacy, they had to pay full price,
cash only, as the internet was down and they couldn’t verify insurance,” she said.

“Because we were in crisis mode, we were able to make on-the-spot decisions to give Benadryl or other medications. We were basically buying our own supplies.”

She said transportation took about an hour for patients needing to be hospitalized.

“We’d call someone in San Juan by satellite phone to get transport,” she said. “There was one man we found in bed since the hurricane who had a gangrenous foot that needed to be amputated. I saw many fragile senior citizens. There were lots of diabetic issues. People could not get insulin as the cost was $400 per bottle.

"One day, we were approached by two guys in Cataño. One had cancer on his leg and an oozing wound, he needed bandages. The other guy had PVD (peripheral vascular disease) and had a sore. We were able to give both of them wound-care supplies.”

Shourt also took a recruitment flier with her, offering interviews for jobs as nursing and medication aides at Chelsea's New Jersey properties. The program has resulted in several leads, she said.