Houston Area Hospitals

[azskyman]

We have friends in Houston who played significant roles in the hospitals there. Bob and Sue (not their real names and each at different hospitals, but husband and wife) both dug in to help. Here's is the first word back from Karla since the ordeal. We're sure proud of their efforts...

Four of our HCA hospitals closer to the water were
evacuated. Bob's hospital in Conroe, my hospital in
Kingwood, and two of our other hospitals in Houston,
thought to be on safe ground, got the pleasure of
taking all of the patients evacuated from the four
closed facilities. That pretty much doubled our
census. Most of the patients were flown in. Since we
were in desperate need of clinical staff to care for
these patients, we agreed to become a shelter for
immediate family members of our employees that
needed to stay and work, and their families had no
where else to evacuate to. We also had a pet shelter.
In addition, we had to provide day care for employees
that had no where else to leave their children. I was
in charge of that whole effort at our facility. Bob
of course was in charge of running his hospital.

I got to come home briefly on Wednesday night to pack
my bag, sleeping supplies (which I didn't really need), etc.
Our daughter had to go with me since Bob also had his
hands full. We got home late last night.

I have to go back in a few hours. Thankfully the storm missed
us. Part of me thinks that we worked so hard for
what? But then the smarter side of me says it was all
worth it. The ironic part is that the four hospitals
we closed received less damage than our facilities
that remained open.

We ended up housing 564 family members of our
employees. We were supposed to have 500 air mattresses
dropped and we ended up getting 28 which I saved for
staff members who desperately needed sleep between
shifts. People slept on the floor of our Medical
Office Building. Our ER was overrun. I went down
there once and it scared the living daylights out of
me. There were people everywhere. Some folks had
passed away in their cars as they were stuck on the
highway for several hours. We had to have a
make shift morgue, we borrowed a Budweiser
refrigerator truck and parked it in our lot.

In the end we lost power at 3:30 a.m. Saturday morning and regained power yesterday around 4:00 p.m. Of course
we had back up generators for the patient care areas.

We are obviously still filled to the brim with
patients, so that's why my new housing job has not
ended. We made a company decision not to fly back
the transferred patients even after their originating
hospital reopened. It's too expensive. Plus now we
have an area just north of our hospital where the dam
at a large lake was going to break so they are
releasing the water and flooding several of our
communities. Now these employees (which we still need
to come to work because we have so many patients) need
a place for their family to go. This saga is never
ending.

[MomH]

Plus now we
have an area just north of our hospital where the dam
at a large lake was going to break so they are
releasing the water and flooding several of our
communities

I heard or read something about this the other night but have heard nothing since. Anyone have an update?