Month: February 2014

I recently finished reading the book Five Days at Memorial — a riveting account of the five days people were stranded at Baptist/Memorial Medical Center during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  It was hard to fathom how people could function in those conditions, let alone care for seriously ill patients, but for the most part they did.

The hurricane happened in August in New Orleans so I can only imagine the stifling heat.  Add to that no electricity — which equals no air conditioning, fans, ice, etc. — but it also means no ventilators or suction pumps or automated IVs.  Nurses and volunteers bagged patients by hand to provide air intake and manually fanned people who were ailing under the oppressive heat. No electricity also means no elevators, so patients were carried in sheets by teams who maneuvered them down sets of stairs and through a window opening to the awaiting row boats and military helicopters.  

The hospital had an emergency plan, but it never took into account that most of the city would be under water and that the hospital would be unreachable by land.  Standby generators were not anticipated to be needed for multiple days.  No one counted on all communication with outside resources being disabled or the need for security to keep people out of the hospital who were desperately trying to reach food and high ground.  In short, the city was like a war zone where plans were tossed aside and survival instincts took over.

For the most part it is good to have emergency plans and drills, but there is no way to predict or prepare for scenarios like Katrina.  At the end of the day, hiring good people with sound judgment is what matters the most.  Think about who you would want tending to your organization if the next Katrina hit, and then try to have those people on your staff.  Even if your organization never encounters Mother Nature’s wrath, you’ll be in a much better place with them on your team.

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink, 2013