Hurricane Gustav Tests Disaster Preparedness

In September 2008, Hurricane Gustav gave administrators at New Orleans (LA, USA) medical facilities the chance to test their emergency response systems, overhauled in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

At Tulane Medical Center (New Orleans, LA, USA), the biggest changes after Hurricane Katrina were to develop more robust emergency plans, better communications, and more responsive methods for coping with a large-scale natural disaster. The first lesson the Tulane administration learned was to reduce the patient population and staff on hand to as few as possible. In the run-up to Hurricane Gustav, they did this by postponing elective procedures, sheltering in place those patients who were too ill to be safely moved, and transporting less fragile inpatients to other facilities during the calm before the storm. Katrina also revealed the inadequacies of the hospital's power plant, when flooding knocked out the back-up generators, and the hospital had neither enough spare generators nor fuel on hand to ride out the storm; today the hospital has generators that are either located above flood stage or are housed in water-tight casings, and enough fuel to last at least one week at full capacity.

"A baby in the intensive care unit on a ventilator can be moved fairly safely if you do it calmly and you transport him in an ambulance with the proper precautions,” said the hospital's CEO, Robert Lynch, M.D. "It's a different story if you have to get him onto the roof of a building for evacuation.”

At the Ochsner Clinic (Terrytown, LA, USA;) West Bank campus--which is susceptible to flooding--administrators made contingency plans for moving operations to the second and third floor, and they moved vulnerable patients to other facilities within the 7-hospital system prior to landfall of the hurricane. The West Bank emergency department stayed open throughout Hurricane Gustav. Immediately after the storm passed the hospital began taking transfers from hospitals in Baton Rouge (LA, USA), which had been hit harder by the storm than was New Orleans. Another step to avoid supply disruption at the hospital was the storing of two-weeks worth of supplies rather than the customary one-week. Ochsner also opened its doors to local police and fire personnel during Hurricane Gustav, and dispatched staff members to the emergency management agencies in the local parishes to help keep the lines of communication open.

"We beefed up our communications so that we could talk between our facilities -- during Katrina communication was a big deal -- so we had satellite phones, ham radios, as well as text messaging and email. We made sure we had backup communication methods so we could talk with all of our facilities [during Gustav], and that worked well,” said Warner Thomas, president and CEO of the Ochsner health system.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, Atlanta, GA, USA) offers comprehensive recommendations for clinicians and relief workers at disaster sites. These include vaccinations, such as tetanus and diphtheria boosters, hepatitis A and B, polio, measles, and influenza. The recommendations also include practical advice on food and water safety, avoiding electrocution, risk of injuries, and environmental hazards.

Related Links:
Tulane Medical Center
Ochsner Clinic
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention