Nexus - 0603 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

om the Sky: The 'Che Continued from page 20 The Philadelphia Daily News of 7 with respiratory diagnoses". Januarv 1999 renorted: "Emergency Room Tn Austin. Texas. Richard Young renort- The Philadelphia Daily News of 7 January 1999 reported: "Emergency Room patients overflowed into the hallways at West Jersey Hospital in Berlin, New Jersey, and ambulance crews were tem- porarily diverted to other institutions as a wave of respiratory illnesses swept the area." At Northern Westchester County Hospital, "there was a 24-hour waiting period to get in". In Manitou, Michigan, Registered Nurse Kim Korte was driving north on M52 when she noticed "stripes" in the sky. "It appeared as if someone took white paint on their fingers and from north to south ran their fingers through the sky. These con- trails were evenly spaced and covered the whole sky," from east to west. Within 24 hours, Korte became very weak and feverish. The RN said that after her boyfriend told her that many in his family had started coming down with the same complaints, she started noticing a lot of her patients and their family members "were coming down with these symptoms at the same time". On checking with her colleagues, the former hospital supervisor learned that other nurses and physicians were complaining of being "extremely busy with respiratory diagnoses". In Austin, Texas, Richard Young report- ed that "The skies here are filled almost daily with trails crossing each other", and a school nurse told a worried parent she had seen over 100 sick children in a single day. Pennsylvania resident told me. "It's just total saturation." As overfilled Pennsylvania hospitals were forced to divert respiratory emergen- cies to other facilities with bed space, another south-central Pennsylvania resi- dent, Deborah Kammerer, looked out her window and watched aircraft that were "flying and dispersing over the city". She commented: "It was supposed to be a clear, sunny day. It became more overcast as the day progressed. I observed how the white trails widened out and settled down, creating a haze over everything." South Florida resident Karen Okenica has watched on several occasions as con- trails "...criss-crossed or ran parallel to each other. They did not dissipate, but got thicker and stayed in the sky for quite a while." Okenica said she became fright- ened after gazing through Nikon binoculars and noticing an all-white jet with "plumes" coming from the rear of the plane. In early December 1998, local newspa- pers reported that Bethesda Memorial and Delray Community hospitals were full and could not accommodate any more patients. A GLOBAL WEB? Americans are not alone in their anxious suffering. After lingering contrails and cobweb-like fallout were reported over London and Birmingham, England, the BBC reported on 14 January that more than 8,000 people—mostly elderly—had died from pneumonia and other respiratory com- plications in the last week of December 1998 and the first two weeks of January 1999. According to the BBC, in early January 1999 more than 97,100 people in England and Wales were stricken with respiratory ailments in a single week—almost double the usual rate. Ambulances services in the Greater Manchester and Mersey regions were each answering more than 1,000 calls every day—almost twice the norm. Norfolk and Norwich suffered such a surge APRIL — MAY 1999 NEXUS - 85 Continued on page 86