As Katrina’s fury rolled through the streets of New Orleans on Monday, August 29, the staff of Memorial Medical Center found itself ill-prepared for a new emergency intake: floodwaters rising to over ten feet.
Although Memorial, like other New Orleans hospitals, had taken some precautions before the storm, like stocking up on supplies and moving out patients who could be safely discharged, the flooding came as a shock to the roughly 2,000 employees, patients and others who took refuge at the facility when the hurricane hit.
“When the levees were breached, all hell broke loose,” recalled Memorial Chief Executive Rene Goux. Emergency generators malfunctioned, temperatures soared, and plumbing and telephone lines failed.
The hospital soldiered on in near primitive conditions. Nurses and family members helped fan patients in sweltering air that neared 110 degrees and reeked of human waste. Employees worked non-stop, eventually limiting themselves to one meal per day.
Government emergency responders seemed no better equipped to deal with the flooding. Memorial’s Texas-based umbrella corporation, Tenet Healthcare, pleaded with the government for evacuation assistance. But according to Goux, local emergency management authorities told the hospital management that if they wanted to move people immediately to safety, “We were pretty much on our own.”
The corporate administrators faced an unprecedented task. Tenet communications director Steve Campanini said, “We are experts in the area of providing care, not evacuating … large groups of people out of hospitals or buildings that are surrounded by water.”
With or without the expertise, people tried to manage. Aside from one Coast Guard mission that airlifted babies from the newborn care unit on Tuesday, help for the hundreds of patients and family members came mostly by unconventional means. Initially, volunteers used airboats to transport people able to withstand the journey. On the government’s advice to hire “private assets” to deal with the situation, Tenet sent private helicopters to rescue those still trapped in the facility. The same fleet later assisted with the evacuation of other stranded hospitals.
The last evacuation came this week: recovery workers removed 45 bodies from the building. Tenet says it is unclear exactly how many died in the aftermath of the disaster.
Of the government's emergency response effort, Goux said, “What’s amazing to me is, we had 2,000 people right there in one congregated area, some severely sick … It seems like that could have been higher on the priority list.”
