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Disaster experiences shared?


Mabel Adams

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We got power back last night. Good thing, there has basically been no ice available in the state since Monday. The last 2 days I got ice from my friends in the cafeteria at the hospital. As of yesterday's paper, though, there were still 100,000 homes in Rhode Island without electricity. Many businesses (and I'm sure individuals) have had to discard tons of spoiled meat and produce. Schools haven't reopened yet. It's still a big mess. Oh, and we did get to take my in-laws out for dinner last night.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm new here, and late to respond, but I'll still add my experience. I work in a smaller hospital (70 inpatient beds+many clinics). We store, on average, 60 RBCs and 60 units FFP. A few years ago we were to undergo a "brief" period on our backup generator power in order to switch over to some new power system. After a few minutes of being on generator power, the generator caught fire, and the entire hospital was without power. The lab was without any power whatsoever for around 3 hours (middle of summer with 90+ degree temps). Of course it was the weekend, with only 3 techs working the entire lab. We do not keep coolers on-site. Luckily, our blood supplier is only about 10 miles away. They were able to bring some storage containers to store the RBCs before the fridge temp began to rise. We placed the FFP in our dry ice bin and checked temps regularly. Thankfully, we did not have any emergency blood bank patients during this period, as emergency release would have been the only option.

Lesson learned. We now have an emergency plan for this kind of situation (backup storage!)

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  • 3 months later...

Good idea. Disasters,great or small, are the mother of learning.

One thing I learned; is to always run a blank to test the solubility of your equipment in the solvents you will use before you use them for real. This will save you from having to wipe stuff off your shoes,or worst.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I had just taken over BB a few months prior to the May 22nd tornado that went through the middle of Joplin, MO. The other major hospital one block away from us took a direct hit and cut a path a mile wide through a very densely populated area. I had just left work as the storm was about 30 minutes out. The weather team had indicated at that time that it was going to go north of the city. Well it didn't. I made it home just in time to take cover myself...

Patients were being brought in by pick up truck, ambulance and every other way you could possibly think of. We also took in numerous patients from the hospital across the street that was destroyed.

I think our emergency team did a great job all things considered.

Our system practiced many disaster drills but they never thought of practicing a disaster that directly affected our community. They seemed so unrealistic... Most of the time they were practicing for a disaster in a different community and we take on patients that were transferred in.

Anyway, several areas failed in my opinion. The lines of communication were absolutely non-existent. Phones lines were not working, cell phones were not working, the radios were the only thing. And our entire lab had one. They paged the blood bank over the intercom system which we couldn't hear in the blood bank.

One of our pathologists immediately recognized the need to get more inventory in. You think duh...But amidst of this mess the obvious gets overlooked. We were able to get 250 units from the hospital that took a direct a hit. Our supplier is 85 miles away. But our pathologist had to drive out of the city to get cell service and place that call. The only line I had to communicate was texting to an employee at our distribution center. It wasn't pretty but it worked.

The second failure was that the patient's were not properly identified when they arrived to the hospital. We have the wristband available exactly for this reason but the ED services did not utilize them. I spent weeks in ICU going through charts trying to figure who patients were. There were three Jane and John does for example. Patient's were given ID's based of their clinical presentation, I.E. sex, approximate age range and their clinical impression or situation...You wouldn't believe what they came up with. And a lot of them were the same as well. I still have a basket of transfusion copies of about 50 units that I have no clue to whom they went to. I presume most of those did not even make it beyond triage.

Another failure in my opinion was the system never activated the disaster plan. You think well duh a tornado just went through town. Luckily most people ignored what they were trained to do, which was stay put until called or notified, and came to help anyway. So again the issue of a disaster occurring within the community was never seriously addressed.

The other problem was the distance of the laboratory to the actual ED. Through several renovations the lab just kept getting pushed further and further away from the main "Tower". Nurses kept showing up for blood with no name, sex or anything. We immediately stopped releasing O- unless they could tell us it was a female under 50 or a child.

I'm sorry if it seems like I am venting. I probably am a bit. But it seems like a consistent theme when disaster strikes. Communication failure...

The whole thing has given me an eye twitch I still can't get rid of...:)

I hope somebody fines the info useful. Thank you everyone else for sharing. An I appreciate anyone's imput.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Can't help thinking of this thread and the people in Illinois and Missouri in the latest tornadoes. Another hospital was hit.

Buffalo, Missouri, which was one of the towns hit, is not far from Joplin. Must be like reliving a nightmare for that area. The weather service is telling those of us who live in Tornado Alley that we are probably going to be in for a rough spring. I hope we don't see the fatalities and destruction that last year brought.

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Was looking at the weather during lunch and noticed a severe weather prediction for just south of our area for tomorrow with a higher possibility of tornadic activity associated with the system. Going to contact my blood supplier directly to find out an alternate means of communicating just in case.

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Was looking at the weather during lunch and noticed a severe weather prediction for just south of our area for tomorrow with a higher possibility of tornadic activity associated with the system. Going to contact my blood supplier directly to find out an alternate means of communicating just in case.

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We had a real incident a few weeks back where there was a terrible school bus accident. 17 children were injured, 1 unfortunately died. We are not a trauma center, but received 10 patients in our pediatric ED. Luckily none of the kids needed blood but we were on the alert just in case.

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Fine here. The few times we have had tornados in the immediate area the sky has had a particular look to it. Same look on Friday, but nothing local reported. South and west of us by a couple of hours however they had their hands full. Thanks for the concern Malcolm.

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