Hurricane Katrina Expreienced from a Biloxi Hopital

From: Hugh Davis [mailto:hughdavis@charter.net] Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2005 7:49 PMTo: John Pounders; Dean TannerSubject: My personal experience from Katrina

I think the life group and the SS class might find this interesting.

Hugh

From: Jennifer [mailto:jennar@cableone.net]Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2005 6:03 PMTo: Sean at work Rafferty; Barbara S Mackie; Anna Anderson; Amanda Akers; Jeremiah Davis; Tricia at home Jones; Hugh Davis; Diane DavisSubject: My personal experience from Katrina To all: I am sure you have all been paying attention to hurricane Katrina that hit Biloxi, Gulfport and other small towns on the coast.

Just a recap on my experience. Sean and I had this great idea to move. We had been in the same home for 18 months and our lease was up. About 4 months before our lease was up, a couple of families had moved in and made the neighborhood an unsafe place. Sean and I were nervous about even letting our children play in the front yard. We decided to move about ½ mile around the corner to another neighborhood that was quiet and felt safe. Sean took leave Wednesday afternoon before the storm hit Monday. When you are moving yourself your life is upside down for at least a couple of weeks. The TV was in the new home in a box, we had switched over cable, water and power to the new address. We moved out things with a borrowed trailer each evening that weekend until we couldn’t pick up another box.

We would then make a trip to the local IHOP for a hot meal and then crash into bed, only to get up in the morning and do it again. We got a call at 10am on Sat that woke us up. It was Sean’s office telling him of mandatory meetings he had to attend and papers he had to fill out stating his intentions of sheltering on base or evacuating. Since the last time we had checked the TV was Wednesday morning when the hurricane was headed to Vero Beach South Carolina we were a little out of pocket on the new info. We had switched over our renters insurance to the new address, but as of Sat morning 1/3 of our belongings were still at our old address. So we put the move into overdrive. We had been slowly moving closet things and the kids toys and attic stuff into a garage that is behind the house. The garage was full. Sat Sean had his friends help us move the big furniture and place it in rooms, Aubrey and I had pretty much unloaded the kitchen and most of the pictures had been taken upstairs to an empty room. Every thing else had hurriedly been staged in the kid’s area.

If you can imagine this house is a long 2-story rectangle. Upstairs was going to be Sean's and my area, downstairs is the kitchen, dining room, laundry room, pantry, and living room. In addition there is a section on the side of the home that is the “mother in law” area with a bathroom, a kitchen, a huge bedroom, and a sitting room. We had decided that the kids were going to take over that area of the house. Being that the “good” furniture was all in place, everything else was staged in this area. We made 5 last ditch runs on Sunday managed to sweep out the house and ran to our new home to shower and pack for evacuation.

Sean loaded me down with food for 3 days, an air mattress and uniforms. Sean packed the kids for 3 days and then loaded them, 4 dogs with crates, 1 cat, and a cooler of all of our frozen meat and headed to the hospital where he dropped me off. He got on the road out of town at about 4:15. As Sean later told me, Aubrey quietly asked as we were packing, Daddy shouldn’t we go, the wind is blowing and there are no cars. The strain was weighing heavily even on the children. I went to the hospital where I clocked in early as the hospital was filling beds as fast as it could. Sean got up on the road only to find that they had shut down 10 to alleviate the heavy flow of traffic. Sean and the kids sat in traffic for hours and just made it over the Pensacola Bridge within minutes of them shutting it down. They all headed for Orlando where Sean’s parents live.
I had communication via cell phone with my family until about 8am on Monday.

The night at the hospital was fairly smooth we had power the cafeteria was open; There was a definite buzz though as the winds picked up. Monday morning my co-workers and I sat in the cafeteria and had breakfast and most of us made calls to our family. That was the last communication we had for 3 days. The night shift went to bed in a surgical waiting room that had no windows; right next to a construction area in the hospital. We had lined up about 12 ecliners and put down the air mattress that individuals had bought. This room slept 8-15 depending on the shift. With light and air it wasn’t half bad. We lay down to sleep at about 8:30. We were abruptly awakened at about 10:30am with shout of “We are evacuating the 6th floor we need everyone’s help.

The 6th floor has 40 beds and the bulk of our patient load that day was shelter patients. That is patients that were brought in and admitted by their personal doctors because the family thought that they were too fragile to evacuate. Most of these patients did not even get admitted with a diagnoses only a history of etc… Some patients were not even receiving meds from the nurses we had orders that they would take their own meds. We became a babysitting floor.

These patients’ families thought by leaving their elderly frail patients with us that they would have air conditioning, TV, hot food and round the clock care. Although this sounds like a cakewalk for the nursing staff we were actually extremely frustrated. Our families and children and pets had evacuated to other cities to be safe, we had a Cat 5 heading for our coast. Our hospital looks over the ocean out of three corners of the hospital. Our view is the ocean; we are a 6-floor hospital that is 2 blocks off the beach. Most of these patients should not have been taking up room on our floor. We were told if we left we would be terminated immediately. Probably 10 of the staff chose to leave regardless. If you have to stay for something like this and put yourself in a grave situation you at least want it to be worth it. The ER nurses saw a lot more than we did. We were full by Sunday night and as I heard later we turned away people in the midst of the storm that needed care because we were full. Talk about some hot nurses!!

Anyway, rooms on the 6th floor began to explode. I originally thought that the wind blew out the windows, but later found out that debris hit the windows, cracked them and then the wind was able to finish the job. The force of 175 mile an hour wind literally implodes rooms. Once the glass has been blown clear to the door the suction power pulls the TVs off the walls pulls blood pressure cuffs off the walls, ect… there was nothing left in its place The wind pulled the ceiling tiles to the floor. In those 4 rooms it looked like a bomb exploded. One room was our chemo room and the wind force destroyed the computer by hurling it across the room. Anyone who could walk went down the stairs. We only had one elevator working as small electrical fires kept breaking out in the other two elevator shafts.

We lost the vent system to the elevators, that is on the roof and therefore using the elevator was a wet messy situation. We had lost power at about 8am along with water. We were running on generator or “red plug” power. We were able to fit about 5 wheelchairs at a time on the one elevator. Then it was the beds, we had 17 of them to get down. We managed to get everyone out. Only one patient was in a room when it exploded. A nurse went in after him to help him out. When she did the door slammed closed behind her. It took 3 men to get it open and get them out because the suction power was so strong. They were not even cut although there was glass on the floor on our side of the door. The chaos of getting all 40 of these patients down, sending the ones on oxygen to the ER to be hooked up trying to keep up with meds, charts and nurses was crazy.

The hospital began running out of bottled water and began to pass out 6oz juice cups that were all room temp. So here is the scenario. No power, no air, 100-plus people in the lobby, nurses standing near their patients fanning them with magazines. The floors are slick; the walls are sweating, no TV or radio to really know how bad it is; just the howling of the wind and the building moving with each enormous wind gust. If you have ever been on the 6th floor of a building and it starts moving under your feet, I can promise you your adrenaline will speed up. All of our elderly patients were pouring sweat, their faces were cherry red, and the staff was also melting as we tried to see to the patients needs. These patients weren’t on the first floor 2 hours when it was decided to evacuate to the 2nd floor because the water that had been 3 feet deep and white capping up hill in the road in front of the hospital was now beginning to flood the loading dock, and there were worries that the lobby would flood. Because there were so many people helping to include maintenance workers, administration, cafeteria staff, I decided to go lie down, knowing I had to be in about 4 hours for my next shift.

The room that had been pleasant the night before for the day shift workers was now sweltering as I was, I wasn’t sure how I would go to sleep with the storm at full force, the rush of the people, the heat, but your body can do amazing things and I woke up about 3 hours later changed out of my soggy uniform and attempted to put on a clean one on a very sweaty dirty body. The hair went up in a ponytail; I wiped off my face with a washcloth and a bottle of water and back upstairs I went to face another night. I found out that by this time they were just finishing evacuating the patients back up to the 6th floor as the winds were beginning to die down. The worst of the storm was over, the winds still gusting at 60 –75 and night was beginning to fall. There was no time during daylight that first 12 hours to look for survivors, paramedics and ambulances worked through the night pulling bodies out of trees and off fences. By 5:00 am a paramedic came in and said they had recovered 800 bodies in Hancock County, 250 in Gulfport and 60 in Biloxi. This was all before daylight. The numbers of the dead that your seeing are not accurate as they have to identify the body and notify or locate and notify the next of kin, before the dead is added to the dead list. I know the funeral homes have refrigerator trucks sitting on site full, waiting for this slow process to play out. Also foul play has to be ruled out before they are added to the Katrina list.

The second night at the hospital was so hot; the cafeteria was able to continue to feed everyone. They closed the cafeteria and sent up dinner in a Styrofoam box Everyone got the same food regardless of your special diet. I tell you we were glad to have it. The smell is beginning to rise as the toilets had not been flushed for 24 hours the linens are not being changed unless completely soiled, sweat does not count. The patient complaints were amazing, “I don’t like tomatoes on my sandwich, why won’t the TV work, and you don’t have fans. I have to ice to drink my juice. The nurse’s sympathy was waning. No one was able to call out at this point, no ones cell phones were working, so people could not touch base with their families. That was probably the single hardest part of the whole experience. I knew that my family was probably safe in Orlando, but they did leave at last minute so I wasn’t totally sure. We had a nurse who talked to her husband Monday morning and he told her there was already 5 feet of water in their living room and he was trapped. She didn’t know till Tues morning that he survived.

Back to the hospital ordeal, we had to compromise on everything. No water, no linens, no fans, no ice, no lights in pts rooms, no computers, no lab equipment, no x-ray or diagnostic equipment nothing was sterile, no toilet water, no flushing toilets, overrunning trash. You name it we couldn’t do it or we were out of it. We had patients stroking out from the heat and all we could do for them was give them Tylenol. The IV’s we put in their veins were great but the tape we used to keep them there slid right off their arms. Everyone was dehydrated. We lost 2 on our floor to heat stroke, I heard the ER lost more than that. By about 4am the National Guard showed up with hummers to guard the hospital.

There were reports of looters in our parking garage getting stereos out of hospital employee’s cars. It was a little surreal for some of our non-military folks in the hospital to see military personnel armed with rifles and handguns and armed humves encircling our hospital. By early morning a National Guard semi truck pulled up with ice and water. What a godsend. We immediately started packing down our feverish patients with ice and started passing water out to the rest of the floor.

The nurse, who didn’t know the whereabouts of her husband, asked myself and another nurse who had a SUV to take her to find her husband. The search that normally would have taken us 15 minutes to get to their home took us almost 2 hours. Most of the major bridges in town were destroyed and trying to navigate streets with 2-6 feet of debris on them, along with downed tree, stalled cars, upside down tractor trailers, boats in the middle of streets and lawns. It took time. We finally got to her house, which was totaled. The water had gone above the ceiling. We later found her husband, who had escaped by crawling out through the crawl space between the roof and the ceiling. He swam for 2 hours until he managed to get into a boat floating nearby, where he rode out the remainder of the storm. He survived with only a broken toe and one broken finger. He was shaky when we found him but alive. I tell you the hug she gave him had Michelle and I in tears.

At this early point those in the hospital were still some what sheltered as we had no way of knowing that Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Point Cadet, and Pearling ton were 80% gone and that Biloxi was over 60% gone. My mom in Birmingham watching CNN knew this, but Biloxians had no clue.

After finding Ann’s husband we managed to get to our new home on the bay. I walked through it with Michelle and naively thought we are okay. The porch in back had a part of a live oak lying on it and most of the porch roof was lying on the ground. The live oak in the back yard was down, its large root system had pulled up the driveway, and as we found out later destroyed our water system, by also pulling up and breaking our water lines. The wet debris was everywhere and the stench was so overwhelming. There were 2 trees lying in the front yard and 3 feet of wet debris piled against the house on the front porch. Mud was everywhere. The mother in law section of the house was wet, with what looked to be about 2-3 feet of water that had entered judging by the water/debris line. The entire window frame in the washroom was broken in half probably from the weight of the wet debris. I have learned a great deal about flood damage since that first surveillance.

Back to the hospital I went, to the heat, the stink, the sweating, and no shower. Tuesday night was better as we were now using redbugs to gather urine and stool. You basically put it in a wastebasket shut the door do your business, tie it up and throw it away. In the morning we nurses were all making our red bag runs as we called them, from all the patients rooms. Although gross, it was the comical part of the morning. There were several references/threats to possible red-bag water balloon fights. Which never of course transpired. It was a week and a half before we back to using toilets. But by Thursday night they were bringing in non-drinkable to flush toilets. It helped tremendously. It was a week and a half for most things, our pharmacy could no longer generate our medication logs which now had to be handwritten each shift. Our lab was down due to lack of water needed to cool the equipment. The doctors would come in and write orders that we could not fulfill.

By the 3rd morning we had DMAT and FEMA tents being set up in the parking lot to help triage. Our problem now was the shelter patients we had, we could not send home because most of our patients had no home to go to and no nursing homes in the direct are could take patients due to their own damage. By the 4th night the hospital was bringing in lake water in 1000-gallon drums to run the air conditioners and we were beginning to get spotty air, which was wonderful. Supplies were slowly trickling in but they were able to keep the water and ice trucks parked at the back door.

I had finally made contact with Sean Tuesday night and told him I was fine and to stay put but you know Sean. Wednesday night he got in the car and headed by himself loaded down with supplies to Biloxi. He stopped in Crestview Florida to get a chainsaw and the new generator he had on the back of the suburban was immediately stolen the minute he stepped foot in the store as told by the store video. He filed a report talked to the manager and then got back on the road.
He arrived at the hospital at about 3am Thursday morning. He was a welcome sight. He brought a cooler of water, we dragged it into the bathroom and he used a cup and washed my hair for the first time in 4 very hot days. It felt like heaven. He also brought 2 box fans that we immediately set up in the nurse’s station. We were blowing hot air around but at least it was moving. I finally finished my forth shift that morning. Sean had left and made a quick 3-hour trip to Mobile to get another generator. I went to bed in the waiting room again and about 9am Sean gathered my things, and me and took me home. We had no power or water, so Sean hooked up the generator and turned on the air in my bedroom. We filled a cooler with water and he dead lifted it up over his head and placed it on top of the shower wall. I opened the spicket and I had a shower albeit cool, it was the best shower of my life. I then crashed in the bed with an air conditioner blowing on me for about 7 straight hours.

I got up about 5pm and Sean and I repacked some things and headed for Orlando where the children and the pets had been left with his parents. We regrouped in Orlando got some rest, did some shopping and attended the Sunday morning service at his parents church. We ended up being the featured speakers. We tried to enlighten them on the circumstances that the Biloxians were facing.

Biloxi as a city was devastated. Our post office, library, gas stations, bridges, grocery stores, car dealerships, and banks were either flooded or gone. People did not understand that we had no cable, no Internet, no newspaper, no TV, no ATM’s, no phones land line or cell. The information network for the entire city had been destroyed. This especially affected the first responders who were not able to coordinate help or plans, as they could not talk to one another. People were living in tents in parking lots. Help was arriving but it takes time. His church gave us a large amount of money to take with us to fill needs as we saw fit. Sean is writing up a letter to send to the church with all that the money did for different families and I will forward that when we get it ready.

Damage. Our home was standing, but we got about 21/2 feet of floodwater in our home. Because we rent the homeowner is responsible for fixing the roof, the porch and gutting and renovating the three affected rooms in the mother in law area of the home. We lost the contents of those three rooms and the contents of the garage. We did not even know the extent of what we lost other than the obvious furniture because as you remember we were moving and most of our things were in boxes. I have sent mom a list of the stuff if you are interested. We did not lose our lives or our pets lives and in the end that is all that matters. We are slowly replacing the things we can, but currently things look a little makeshift as does most peoples homes that are still standing. The contractors are supposed to come next week and start hauling away the live oak that fills up the back yard and begin gutting the mother in law area. I don’t have a date yet for the workers to begin replacing all the air-conditioning ducts and replacing the air conditioner as although it runs it was also swamped. The roofers may be awhile, I don’t look forward to that week, but according to our adjuster we are only a good rain away from leaking ceilings from all the roof damage.

We spend all our off time either helping church members and neighbors or going to Mobile for relief, fun and supplies. There is nothing here that we used to do, from spending evenings walking on the beach, and walking on the piers looking at boats, to taking children to various parks to play and ride their roller blades. The mall is closed most restaurants in Biloxi are gone. We have been able to eat out in Ocean Springs some. The normal things people did for entertainment is all gone. The casinos with their buffets, and shows are gone. Even things like the fall festivals and art festivals are gone because the parks and green areas that they used to set up are full of debris piles and downed trees. It is a very depressing place to be. It helps to keep busy and to help others. Life as the coast new it has changed. People’s sense of security has changed.

No one will even tolerate discussion of another storm right now. The I survived Katrina t-shirts are not a big seller as people are still to raw and so many are dealing with the funerals of all those who didn’t survive. Cars are flying off the lots and the big people with all the big money are swooping in buying all the little peoples land. I am watching neighborhood that have been here for decades disintegrating. Soon the one thing I loved the most about Biloxi, the fact that you didn’t have to be a millionaire to see the water from your home, that you could be ordinary and live on the water is a thing of the past. The casinos and condos will soon own the old neighborhoods. The retirees are leaving; the casino workers don’t have work for up to a year so they are leaving or being relocated, the restaurant workers are mostly gone.

A largely Mexican population that has been brought in to help with the debris cleanup and mold removal has replaced all these people. The IP casino is full of FEMA workers. The Hard Rock has some construction company taking up their rooms. The Vietnamese are leaving as the shrimp season was declared a failure, and most lost their boats or are living on them with their entire families as their homes were disintegrated on the point. Schools in the area are running with 50% less students than before the storm, as most parents have sent their children to live with relatives out of state and have enrolled them in those states. I hope for the best but I have a gut feeling that this coast will become a land of the super rich and that is sad for me.

As for us emotionally we look at things differently. I am considering trading my Sebring convertible, which I used to love to put the top down and go for slow drives on the beach to a SUV. I don’t like driving it now; I am to close to the debris. My car can’t get through certain areas because it sits to low. I no longer feel safe in it.

We were in Mobile last week driving on a road past a neighborhood. The road was built up and there was this pretty home but it sat about 6 feet lower than the road. The boys had mentioned something about it, I don’t remember exactly what but Aubrey said, “Mommy that isn’t safe, it is going to flood.” just as matter of factly as that. What 9-year-old views beautiful homes on whether or not they are safe? We definitely have a new eye for what to look for in our next home. And of course the next word is pay attention to every piece of paper your insurance co sends you. No more just sticking it in the top drawer. Nothing will ever be the same and it is sad. The spirit of the people is incredibly determined, though and you rarely hear complaining. Just a “we are alive and that’s all that matters” attitude.

The experience has been a life changing one and continues to be as we see the small miracles brought by the kindness of strangers. Please forward this to anyone you think would be interested, I will try to answer any questions you may have. Pray for Biloxi, Waveland, Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, D’Iberville and the other small communities and their residents as they make life-changing decisions.

Love Jennifer