Posted on 08/31/2005 9:05:24 AM PDT by Born Conservative
NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 30-While most of New Orleans headed for high ground as Hurricane Katrina roared toward this city, the staff at Tulane University Hospital, anticipating flooding, also moved the emergency department to higher ground -- the second floor. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
By day's end Tuesday the 1,000-bed hospital was evacuating all patients and staffers. "Everyone," said hospital vice-president Karen Troyer-Carawy.
A 200-foot long breach in the 17th Street Canal levee near Lake Pontchartrain sent water pouring onto the streets, spilling miles in all directions, inundating at least 80% of the Crescent City, and causing water at the hospital on Tulane Ave. to rise at least as high as the top of the first story.
"We've now lost one of our backup generators," Troyer-Carawy said in a television interview as the day wore on, "so we have, you know, enough portable generators to provide the critically needed care for our patients, but if the water continues to rise, we will lose all of our backup generator power in the building. We've already lost air, suction, and water."
Troyer-Caraway said that the hospital had about 200 patients it was trying evacuate quickly, 60 of whom came to the hospital during the storm from the Louisiana Superdome. The rest would be evacuated more deliberately.
"We have a series of medical helicopters that are evacuating patients one and two at a time off the roof of our parking garage because of the critical issue we have with losing backup generator power," she said.
Some of the infants in the neonatal intensive care unit were transferred to Lafayette Women's Hospital in Lafayette, La. Other patients were being transported to hospitals in Alexandria, La., Houston, Pensacola, Fla. and Nashville.
Charity Hospital, the city's main trauma center, also on Tulane Ave., was said to have ceased operations and planning evacuation of patients and staff.
"Right now, our basement and I believe the first floor -- our basement is flooded and the first floor, the E.R. had to be evacuated also," Henryetta Walton, a nurse in a critical care unit at Charity, said in an on-air interview this morning. "We're without power, but we're functioning on a generator in our unit, and pretty much the patients are -- those who are ventilated, they're being ventilated electrically. After that goes out, they're getting generators. We're hoping that, you know, that would help us to sustain the patients."
Richard Zuschlag, president of Acadian Ambulance, told a reporter early today that his company's medical transport helicopters are taking part in relief efforts.
"We probably have half a dozen hospitals that are stranded, running out of power, that have more than 150, 200 patients each, and I think before the end of the week, they're going to be requesting help to get those critical patients out of New Orleans," Zuschlag said. In some cases, we're not able to get to them by ground because of the massive floods."
Getting them off the ground is the job of specialized medical transport services.
"We are part of everybody's emergency preparedness plan," said Suzanne K. Wedel, M.D., executive director of the non-profit Boston MedFlight, a critical care transport service funded in part by Boston's major teaching hospitals.
"Depending on the type of emergency we respond appropriately, whether it's to a state prison, a large corporation, a hospital or a region," she said.
For example, following a catastrophic fire that killed 100 people at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, authorities called on the service and its highly skilled staff, backed by three helicopters, a jet, and two critical-care ambulances.
Hospitals prepare for such emergencies with detailed plans about triage and about moving critically ill patients with their required equipment.
Several miles west of downtown New Orleans, at Ochsner Clinic Foundation on Jefferson Highway, many of the phone lines were down, the hospital was running on emergency power, and pieces of the roof were lying scattered on the ground. But for the most part, the hospital was spared the brunt of the storm, said Warner Thomas, president and chief operating officer, in an interview at about 10 a.m. Central time today.
"I don't think we're going to need to evacuate -- right now it's dry probably within a mile of our facility, so unless there are more levee breaches, I think we're going to be fine."
But getting supplies in could be a real problem, Thomas said. "We're in a part of the city that at this point is not underwater, although water is rising around us. We have sites in Baton Rouge that are trying to get supplies into us. Our facilities are in pretty good shape. We just need supplies."
The hospital is full and can't take any patients from other hospitals, except for a few emergency department walk-ins.
In an interview Monday afternoon, when it looked like the worst was over for the city, staffers at Ochsner were breathing sighs of relief.
"The biggest question I think for all of us was that we really didn't know what this [hurricane] was going to bring," said Avery Corenswet, RN, vice-president of operations at Oschner. "We knew that were going to have very high winds, but the big question was were the streets going to be flooded and were we going to be without anybody coming in to help us for weeks -- the worst-case scenario."
Preparing for the worst involved discussions with staffers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, who faced their own water-borne crisis in 2001.
On June 9 that year, Memorial Hermann Hospital had to evacuate 540 seriously ill patients after the hospital lost power. A total of 12 inches of rain from tropical storm Allison had fallen in the Houston area over the previous days, causing massive flooding of the hospital and the adjacent medical school, and shutting down the hospital's power supply.
"For the first time in Memorial Hermann Hospital's 76-year history, the hospital closed its doors, necessitating heroic efforts to calm, treat, and transfer 540 patients to other hospitals up to 200 miles away," according to an article on the UT Houston web site.
The patients were strapped to transportation boards and carried by all available staffers down flights of stairs lit only by emergency lights. Some of the ICU patients required mechanical ventilation duration transportation.
Sidewalks outside the hospital became an informal staging area, streets were cleared for transport helicopters, and staff members walked from patient to patient, recording by hand details about where and when patients were being transferred.
No patient deaths occurred during transportation. The death toll in the Houston area from storm related events was 22, the UT Houston web site says.
I hope everything is OK with him. I can't even fathom what it is like down there. It's even more mind boggling to think of what it is like working in a hospital right now under these conditions; we take a LOT for granted.
Take your spam somewhere else, where it is relevant. It's not wanted or needed on the hurricane threads.
The cousin in Baton Rouge goes to LSU, and his wife teaches.
They made it through the storm...she's a teacher, but the schools are closed.
Let's stay on topic please. Thanks.
Louis Armstrong
My wife's male cousin is a doctor there (Tulane).
Hmmm...are we related? ;-)
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