Thursday, September 15, 2005

Katrina

Alright, I'm back home and online, folks. This post might be kinda long. Here's what happened:


The Hurricane


My baby boy was born prematurely on August 15 so he was put in the NICU. Exactly two weeks later Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. My baby was staying in a hospital uptown, his mother had evacuated with some family to Houston, and my older son had gone to Baton Rouge with his mother. Most hospital visitors that could evacuate left the hospital the Saturday before the hurricane hit, leaving behind loved ones and hospital staff (I gotta give them props, they were very brave to stay). Some other NICU parents and I decided to rough out the storm with the staff and stay next to our babies. The weather conditions deteriorated quickly the early hours of Monday the 29th. When light filtered through the hurricane winds early that morning, I could see out of a window that was uncovered and unaffected due to it's location; I had a clear vision of the pounding that the city was getting. I couldn't see far out but I saw the shooting rain, the water rising, roof shingles being blown off houses, and trees tumbling to the ground. On the 6th floor waiting room there was a glass wall that overlooked the city. I went to go stand near the entrance to that room when I saw that some of the glass panes had been pushed in by the wind. The hurricane was blowing directly into the building; water was everywhere. It wasn't rising but the carpet was wet so they closed off access to that area. I was looking through the doors' small glass screens and I could see the howling wind screaming its way into the hospital. Because the hurricane fluctuated between a category 4 and a category 5, I didn't know how hard the winds were pushing up against the hospital walls. Some gusts blew so hard I was scared the winds would get so strong that they'd peal the sturdy brick hospital walls, like Hurricane Ivan had done to Florida's tall structures. The building held firmly after hours and hours of abuse though. In fact, much of the city was holding up fine.


The Flood


Tuesday morning the sky was clear. It was a beautiful day. Long before then the city had lost all power and the hospital was working off generators. By late afternoon the waters had receded and I took a walk around the neighborhood. Light posts were laying down, electric lines hung low, and water marks on the walls of homes gave evidence of how high the water had risen. It looked like it hadn't gone up more than about 4 or 5 feet. After my walk around the city, I went back to the hospital to be with my newborn son. (When I got to the NICU I got word that a nurse that had decided to take a break and take her dogs for a walk had been robbed at gunpoint by 3 kids; this marked just the beginning of what was to come of those left in the city.) There were plans to evacuate NICU and all other priority patients to hospitals in Lafayette and Baton Rouge. The doctors, nurses, and visitors would have to find alternate methods of evacuation. I was fine with that because I knew were my newborn son was going and that he'd be safe. Everything looked fine... then I got word that the levee had broken.


Extreme flooding was expected around the city in no time. Just then a call came to the NICU that was for me. My newborn's mom had returned from Houston with her family, thinking everything was okay because the hurricane had passed. I told her that the levee had broken and that they'd be trapped in their houses. There was no time to evacuate... none. Those who were in the city were stuck there. I looked out of the window and I saw the dry streets begin to fill with water quickly. In about an hour the section of Uptown where the hospital was, not far from my son's mom, the water had risen to about 6 feet. In Slidell the flood waters covered everything to the 3rd exit after the Slidell twin span bridge. Many nurses had homes there and in Chalmette, which was now nonexistent. The twin span was deemed a total loss. I could see the despair on the nurses' faces as they worked but they held up fine and comforted each other. Just before the water got too high, a nurse told me that the newborns in the NICU would be evacuated to a hospital in Baton Rouge and told me not to worry and that I could leave before it was too late. I started to pack up but I couldn't leave my baby... so I stayed. I had to make sure he was on that helicopter to Baton Rouge.

The Evacuation

The plan was to get the babies on a helicopter to an awaiting hospital in Baton Rouge. We were to bring them from the 6th floor to the 2nd of the hospital where they'd be taken to the parking garage through a small passageway, then driven to the 8th floor where the helicopter landing pad was located. Some problems arose though: there was only one working elevator and it was slow and being held up by people literally playing around on other floors and we didn't know when to bring the children down. The head nurse got a radio so now we could get word on when to send them down, but how were we to bring them down from the 6th floor to the 2nd? We couldn't carry them because some were still in incubators, which were too heavy and bulky to carry down that many flights. There was a man who had a key to the one working elevator and could control it completely. I took the radio from the head nurse and told her I'd try to get the lines of communication patched up and secure that elevator. I went to the 2nd floor and told the woman in charge of prepping the patients to call me over the radio to let me know when to bring down the NICU patients and to signal the elevator guy to come to the 6th floor. Then I told the elevator guy to wait there and look for her signal to come to the 6th. Everything was cool now. We had a working line of communication and a method to bring down the NICU patients. I went to the 6th and told the head nurse who was relieved and very thankful. Then we passed the plan on to the other nurses. They went back to preparing the babies for transport while crying due to all the stress from the rush and from the loss of their homes and their belongings. We were told to bring the babies in the incubators first so we got them down. The last incubator was too tall to get in the back of the truck though. It would have hit the low ceiling of the garage so 3 nurses pushed it up the ramp from the 2nd to the 8th floor. The rest of the babies in the NICU, which included my son, were to wait until we got word again. In the mean time another unit was being evacuated. The nurses kept preparing the babies that were left. I helped the as much as could by changing diapers, feeding babies, giving them pacifiers when they cried, and packing their medical records.

I listened to the hand held radio and ICU, 2 floors above us, was trying to get in contact with the woman on the 2nd floor but she wasn't responding for some reason. I asked them what was wrong. It turned out their elevators weren't working at all and they had about 8 ICU adult patients that needed to be brought down to be airlifted. Even though it was in the same building, the elevator I'd reserved only went to the 6th floor so we couldn't use it. I thought for a second and told the ICU to hold on. I asked the head nurse if we were able to get the ICU down to the 6th, if we could use the 6th floor elevator. She said cool, so I told ICU that we had a working elevator on 6 if we could carry the patients down 2 flights. The lady on the 2nd floor called for the NICU so I gave the word and the nurses took the rest of the babies down. I got to see my son rushed out of NICU but I wasn't able to go down with him because I wanted to help evacuate the ICU. It hurt so much that I couldn't be with him all the way to the helicopter but he was on his way to safety and these other people didn't even know if they were going to be able to be evacuated. I just kept moving to keep from crying. I went to the 8th floor via the stairs to get an exact count of the patients and to see what they'd need. The nurses said they needed stretchers, big ones. We didn't have any on the 6th so I asked them if we could use some wheeled chairs that reclined. They said yes but 3 of the patients definitely needed those big stretchers. I told them to get the easy patients down first and that I'd try to find some stretchers. I ran back down to 6, told the nurses the plan and they helped me get the chairs and clear a path. With the help of some cops, nurses, and other men we were able to get the patients down the two flights and onto the chairs. Somehow some stretchers made their way up to the 6th so we were able to get those last 3 patients. The very last patient though was 325 lbs so we couldn't carry him down. We tried figuring out what we were going to do with him for the longest. Nobody could come up with a solution. At the last minute, however, the engineers got the 8th floor freight elevators working so they took him down that way. The people taking his stretcher down, however didn't know where on the 2nd floor to take him so I had to run down the stairs from the 6th, where I'd been at the time, and meet up with them to guide them to the staging area on the 2nd. All the ICU and NICU patients were finally either gone or ready to go. I was left completely exhausted by then.

Recognition

Throughout the whole ordeal people kept asking me what unit I worked for and I'd tell them I'm just an NICU father. Their eyes would open up wide with surprise. Nurses asked if I was "one of the husbands" referring to the nurses' husbands who were also there helping everything get underway. I remember overhearing a nurse tell another nurse, "Oh my God. Did you know he's just one of the parents? I can't believe it. I'm so proud...", that's all I heard before I had to start preparing for the evacuation; I don't know if she was stating that she was proud of me or of everyone or someone else. Everywhere I went people asked me my name, asked me what I did for a living, and asked if I was in the military because of my shirt, which stated USMC. I proudly told them I'd served 6 years. People wanted to know who I was; I couldn't believe it. Had I made that much of an impression on everyone? Did I look that strong? Did people look up to me as a leader that much? I finally saw the full effects of my Marine Corps training. I felt like I'd moved mountains... for the first time in my life.

After everything settled down, nurses brought me sandwiches, pulled up chairs for me to sit, glasses of water for me to drink, etc. One of the husbands shook my hand and said that not even half of what we'd done would have been accomplished without me. The head nurse hugged me with tears in her eyes and thanked me for everything, saying that she doesn't know if she'd have pulled it off without me. With all of assistance and praise I was getting I felt like a damn king... a tired one though. I'll admit the recognition felt good but I took it all in with grace and humility because I really did it because I wanted to make sure my son was on that helicopter. I kept moving because I needed to distract myself of the pain of being separated from both of my sons. I kept helping more and more people hoping that in my time of need, someone would be there for me... but eventually I would be abandoned by this wish. More on that next blog...

[ TheSaga | 7:19 PM | ]