Manchester – For a split-second, Lynda McLaughlin is not sitting at her dining room table in the cozy comfort of her Boynton Street home. She has tumbled in her mind back to Louisiana, where life for Katrina refugees is as stagnant as the nearby marshes from which bodies of the missing have yet to be dredged.

“I struggled through it,” said McLaughlin of her mission of mercy.

She sat Monday night thumbing through a file folder detailing her recent two-week stay in Chalmette, a small town southeast of New Orleans’ decimated Ninth District.

“It’s where the poorest population lives — white and black. It was profound.” McLaughlin said. “They’ve lost everything — and all they can think about is that hurricane season is six months away.”

From Dec. 10 through Dec. 23, McLaughlin served on an eight-member FEMA medical relief team organized by the American Red Cross. Her teammates came from around the country for their particular medical specialties, including Dr. Serafin Anderson, a pediatrician from Wilton.

McLaughlin said she and her team arrived in Louisiana expecting a hospital environment nestled in a community where rebuilding and recovery were under way.

Instead, the landscape was devoid of life — miles of debris, small mountains of battered cars junked in the medians, barges and boats parked in barren fields, houses abandoned in shambles, marked with angry graffiti or spray-painted by rescuers with the number of dead found inside.

No animals or birds, no insects, no plants — the Spanish moss normally draped in tree branches was replaced by trash — McLaughlin said the dismal scene was overshadowed only by the unnatural, unnerving silence of nightfall.

“Every single person had a story. At first I was writing them all down, but it was too sad. It got to be too much. I couldn’t do it anymore,” McLaughlin said. “For two days after I came home, everything made me cry. Everything.”

Her urge to be a volunteer was equal parts humanity and heredity.

Her dad, Joe McLaughlin of Goffstown, was born and raised in Bogalusa, a Louisiana city north of New Orleans.

“I was watching the TV with my mom and dad as we were waiting for Katrina to hit — we knew what was going to happen. Dad was devastated. The next day I called the Red Cross and asked, ‘How do I sign up?’” McLaughlin said.

She was called twice, but each time had only a day’s notice to board a plane and head south — not enough time to square things away at her job as a nurse with Elliot On Call.

In December, everything fell into place.

“I couldn’t have done it without my co-workers’ support. They donated time to me because I didn’t have enough earned time left to go — I just got back from a vacation with my daughter,” McLaughlin said.

She thought she was prepared for the worst.

“Not even close,” she said. “It was like nothing I could’ve imagined, even in my worst nightmare, or the scariest sci-fi film you’ve ever seen.”

Two makeshift communities, one known as Tent City, the other as Renaissance City, now exist in Chalmette, where 8,000 refugees are housed and fed three times a day.

Her medical mission was to establish emergency room service and treatment rooms for the triple-wide trailer that serves as a medical clinic in a downtown parking lot.

“People don’t really understand the scope of the situation, until you tell them to imagine how it would be for their own parent if someone destroyed all their medical records, then threw away all their prescription medications, and then sent them into a clinic with 150 other people to wait for treatment,” McLaughlin said.

During her stay most of those she treated came for immunizations. But people with asthma, rashes and symptoms of airborne illnesses were common, McLaughlin said.

Refugees are still in need of warm clothing and blankets as temperatures dip down into the 40s at night, McLaughlin said.

“A lot of people were moved to send money right away, but they didn’t know where their money was going. I told them I would go back and tell the story of how it really is, and pass along information for anyone who would like to help this community,” McLaughlin said.

Tax-deductible donations can be sent to a fund established by the Chalmette Kiwanis that goes directly to help people in need: St. Bernard Kiwanis Foundation, 100 Intermodal Drive, Chalmette, La. 70043, Attn: Robby Showalter.