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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/19/2011 in all areas

  1. :bored:On 6/7/08, my 225 bed hospital was flooded. The lab was in the basement. The water spread from floor to ceiling and into the first floor(14 feet of water)! Information Services, Food Services, Elevator Services, Pharmacy, Electrical Services were also in the basement. The patients and personnel were all evacuated within 3 hours with the help of the National Guard. No one was injured. Needless to say the hospital was closed for 5 months. We lost EVERYTHING in the basement. It was later declared a 500 hundred year flood. The hospital is next to a very small creek. The lab had an off-site blood drawing station where we resumed out patient services 2 days later. We sent the specimens to a reference lab. Within 2 weeks they moved in a mobile Emergency Room for which we purchased new lab equipment and provided basic services for these patients. We stocked 4 units of O Negative blood in a blood refrigerator in a house across the street where the Helicopter personnel lived. Management personnel were housed in an airport hangar. Within a few weeks, we had new computers and began trying to think of everything we needed to replace. It was a huge task. I wished I had had a document listing all of our equipment, etc. I was greatful that our procedures and our personal hard drives were able to be restored on the computers. It was a devasting experience, but due to a lot of hard work, 4000 construction workers, and FEMA we moved back in to a temporary lab in 5 months. The hospital was reopened. It was a great relief to the community since we are the only hospital within miles. 6 more months later, we moved into a new lab (on the first floor!!). Lessons learned: I don't think you can fully prepare for such a disaster and our hospital and lab Disaster Manuals didn't work! We didn't have land line phones for days and computers for weeks. We even ran out of toilet paper in 2 days in the off-site location! We now have new disaster plans, but I have lost confidence. In hind sight, communication with personel was difficult. We set up a lab group email so we could at least communicate with them at home if they had computers. I now keep their phone numbers at home. Everyone remained employed in some capacity. Positive aspects included that people from all departments learned to work together and there was good comradarie. I hope that none of you ever have to experience anything like this.
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