Southeast Texas veterans and their families can return in November to the Beaumont VA Outpatient Clinic. I hope that if you read this, pass it on to other veterans.
My local Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic has been closed since being, at least partially, swallowed by the Great Flood of Ought-17. The clinic I use, which is only a block from Interstate 10 in Beaumont, TX. The flooding was due to Hurricane-Tropical Storm Harvey. I have to go to that Clinic at least every two months or so for various reasons. Thus, I looked at the VA information on the ‘net and saw that the Beaumont VA clinic was closed when the flooding began at the end of August. It remains closed here on Oct. 25, 2017.
A spokeswoman for the VA at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston said the Beaumont clinic building will open soon.
Maureen Dyman, Houston VA spokesperson said in an email that the clinic is set to reopen “sometime in November.”
” … we are seeing more than 100 patients a day in 5 mobile medical units set up out in the parking lot of the clinic. We are really committed to serving our Beaumont Vets during this time,” Dyman said.
Those units outside the water-logged clinic building are reminiscent of “M.A.S.H.” in the movie and television series. That is due to the series of tents outside the clinic. There are also some big RVs helping such as the photo of the mobile Vet Center. Still, in all of this, it seems the staff is getting things done the best they can, at least that was my one experience.
I figured the clinic would be hard hit with flooding. Just off I-10 and near the clinic was where a nurse for a Port Arthur hospital had, for some reason parked in rising flood waters at at a medical building. When Collette Sulcer stepped out of her car with her 3-year-old daughter Jordyn, she was swept away in the swift water, hanging on. Local police and firefighters in a Zodiac boat happened to see a woman in the flood waters with a little girl hanging on. The first responders plucked the child from the flood waters as well as her mother. The police and fire people saved Jordyn but Collette didn’t make it though those responders and others tried mightily, giving the mother CPR all the way to a hospital. The mother died holding onto Jordyn Grace Sulcer.
Some say Collette is a hero for the remarkable feat of hanging on to her daughter in the racing water that claimed the mother’s life. Maybe. Perhaps so. But Collette Sulcer was also doing her most important job as a mother.
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