(News Caster) Let's get into it folks give you the rain breakdown, what we're looking at,
what we're expecting and when the relief will come. Rounds of rain and showers and
thunderstorms, the possibility of an additional 5 to 8 inches of rain...
(Male Voice) Coming into work Friday morning thinking you're going to have a normal day and
then not leaving until sometime the next week. That was something I wasn't imagining.
(Female Voice) I don't think we all understood how serious it was going to be.
(Female Voice) You really did not have a clear picture of how detrimental things were outside.
(Male Voice) It was just like one hard thunderstorm after another and it just never stopped.
(Female Voice Crying) People's houses were flooding, they were losing everything.
(All Voices Jumbling as One)
You know what scared me? We have a lot of woods around us and I was driving the
truck around and there were deer and armadillos and rabbits and raccoons
coming out of the woods and when I saw that knowing that an animal's instinct
is to get out when it's getting bad and they're walking through our parking lot
and it's like are they looking for Noah's Ark? I mean I didn't know.
Streets began to close and that's when we begin to experience water coming over Medical
Center Drive blocking our access to the hospital and at that time we knew that
things were going to be different than what we had dealt with in the past.
We were receiving numerous calls from employees who had water in their homes...
...couldn't get to and from locations and so we knew we really had to shelter in place.
Counting myself, we really only had one other surgeon
and he came in after the road had already flooded, he sort of drove
through a foot of water to get here.
I actually had several employees that were
not scheduled to be here who left their families and their homes to come work...
and many of them, when they were finally able to leave, went home to flooded homes.
When the Ochsner Navy arrived here at our facility you know we talked as a
group real briefly and we knew what the plan would be should the water continue
to rise, but what could we do for the community? So the decision was made to go
ahead and take some of the boats out into the local community streets.
How many organizations you go to and say "I need some boats" and you got two boats in two hours?
And you've got administrators out there who are not afraid to get their hands dirty.
It was very refreshing to see people who are there to help just
like we were and at that point in time it's not about job responsibilities or
what you've been hired to do it's about who you are as a person...
On Sunday morning we went out to measure the water again and the water was rising at a
level that we knew we probably had less than eight hours to move patients before
we would lose power.
Flight restrictions were a thousand feet and we were at nine
hundred feet so the pilots couldn't fly so we had to get them out with the
National Guard because the depth of the water you couldn't get an ambulance in here.
Our patients were terrified when we told them we were going to have to
evacuate them and send them to New Orleans. They didn't know when they were going to
see their families again. Family members were crying at the bedside as we're
loading these patients up.
Now I'm having to tell my husband and the family, you know,
they're shipping me off to New Orleans. Of course my heart rates going fast I'm,
you know, not too happy about it but we had to get out.
You know it wasn't just about
the sickness anymore, it was about life beginning to fall apart, you know, so we
were there. We were that bond and kept it together for them.
It's like a well-oiled
machine I guess. You didn't have to say anything just people knew what you
needed or what needed to be done and everybody just made good face to do it.
Our team of folks did a outstanding job they were very organized they printed
out the medical records the patient needed to have.
And I made it a personal
commitment to talk to every patient before we put them in a vehicle to
evacuate them. To explain why we made the decision we did and let them know that
they were going to other Ochsner hospitals but they were in good hands
and that we knew clinically they were going to do just fine.
And that we were still there to support them as soon as the water went down...
You know, it's the post-disaster recovery that's almost as important as what you
do in the actual emergency.
There are a lot of folks both in the Ochsner family and
our patients families that have lost everything.
We set up the OshMart which
is basically a store that employees can shop. We set up a daycare and we don't
want the employees to worry about bringing food or cooking food so we've
been supplying that to them free of charge as well.
The amount of generosity
that was shown with the trucks pulling up bringing pallets of cleaning supplies
baby supplies you name it it was brought here.
We have a team called Helping Hands
that our facilities group out of New Orleans has put together where we're helping
people gut their homes.
The teams coming from New Orleans to help everybody here
clean their houses out, complete strangers that we've never met before
it's really, really just inspiring...
Everybody pulled together as a family,
It's like a huge hug going on it made me a stronger team person it made me a better
leader. I learned a lot.
I don't want ever have to do it again but it was...it was
awesome experience I guess, in that aspect, just to see how much people care about each other.
We're all human beings and at the end of the day we all
need each other no matter what the situation may be and that's what family
is about, that's what togetherness is about.