Home > Through Hell and High Water > Archives > 2006 > May > 08 > Entry
CHAPTER 2: TWO FORTRESSES AGAINST THE STORM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Multimedia
New Orleans — The news stunned Susan Sanborn on Saturday morning: Hurricane Katrina, on its way to becoming a catastrophic Category 5, was hurtling toward her beloved city like a heat-seeking missile.
The professional dancer-turned-student nurse didn’t consider evacuating. She had totaled her car and used the insurance money to pay for nursing school. Her only transportation was a bicycle. If Katrina really did have New Orleans in its cross hairs, she figured her workplace — the fortress of the venerable Charity Hospital — was the safest place to be.
Like many hospitals, the building had served as a civil defense shelter during the Cold War, and in its 60-plus years had sheltered patients — among the city’s poorest — through dozens of storms. No emergency plan had ever called for a wholesale evacuation of the 20-story hospital. Charity remained open for business, come hell or high water.
If hospital administrators called a code gray — the term used to signal a weather emergency — Sanborn planned to be there. The 37-year-old Ohio native had volunteered for the activation team, which would report to work with enough food and water to last three days. They would tend to Charity’s 347 patients in 12-hour shifts, and once the emergency ended, a recovery team would relieve them.
By Saturday afternoon, the storm’s path and intensity spurred hospital administrators to activate the code, a decision that would cost about half a million dollars in staffing and supplies. It would take effect at 8 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 28.
Another nurse offered Sanborn a ride to work. She’d have too much stuff to carry on her bike. Although this was Sanborn’s first code gray, she was in the company of experienced Charity staff, such as Dr. Ben deBoisblanc.
Since coming to the hospital as a medical student 28 years earlier, deBoisblanc had soldiered through a half-dozen code grays. A passionate, emotional man with thinning reddish-blond hair, the New Orleans native looked like the actor Ed Harris of “Right Stuff” fame. At 50, he was director of the medical intensive care unit. Staff and patients called him “Dr. Ben” — far easier than pronouncing his French name.
Several months before the storm, his wife of 20 years had left him. He was shocked; never even saw it coming. A sailor from childhood, he moved out of their home in New Orleans and onto his boat, Creola, moored at a marina on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain.
Before leaving Sunday morning for Charity, Dr. Ben prepared the boat as well as he could, then grabbed his children’s pictures and other mementos. One prized possession was his only photo of his late father, who had instilled in him his love for the water. His father had never graduated from high school, and more than anything had wanted his son to get a good education.
As he started to take the picture off the wall, Dr. Ben felt his father’s presence. Somehow, he believed, his father’s spirit would watch over Creola. He left the photo behind.
Over the years, with every major storm, Dr. Ben had heard the dire predictions: With the right conditions, the storm surge would put this bowl of a city that sits below sea level under water. Each time Charity had braced itself, and each time the storms petered out or veered away from the city. This time, Katrina promised something more.
As Dr. Ben reported for duty on Sunday morning, he told himself he’d be on lockdown no more than a day or two. But he also couldn’t help thinking:
This could be the big one.
Three hundred fifty miles away in Houston, Sharif Omar collapsed in bed after a Saturday night spent celebrating. Tall and slim, with bushy black hair and long eyelashes, the young man was getting married the next weekend in Virginia, and his bachelor’s party had stretched past midnight.
At 26, Sharif Omar — named for the star of the movie “Doctor Zhivago,” only in reverse — was associate vice president of operations at Tulane Hospital, located across Tulane Avenue from Charity. It was his job to ensure that there was plenty of food, water and blood on hand. He also was in charge of transporting patients. It was a big job under normal circumstances, and critical when a storm threatened.
Before falling asleep, Omar checked the news: Still churning several hundred miles away in the Gulf, Katrina was a Category 3. When he awoke the next morning, it was a 5.
As traffic snaked out of New Orleans Sunday under a mandatory evacuation ordered by Mayor Ray Nagin, Omar sped in the opposite direction, sometimes topping 90 mph as police just watched. He arrived in the city around 5 p.m., grabbed some clothes at his house, then headed to the hospital. The hurricane’s initial bands of wind and rain were starting to blow in.
While other businesses boarded up their shops, the city’s hospitals prepared to hunker down and remain open. Critical patients could not be safely moved without tremendous risk, especially those on ventilators and other life-support equipment. The hospitals’ emergency power systems — gas- and diesel-fueled generators — would keep the machines going if the city’s power failed.
At Tulane, administrators made routine preparations, taking inventory and deciding on staffing for their 178 patients. Owned by the Hospital Corporation of America, the largest for-profit hospital chain in the country, Tulane was one of four HCA hospitals in the path of Katrina.
All were the responsibility of Mel Lagarde, president of HCA’s Delta Division. Lagarde decided to base his command post at Tulane because it was centrally located. From there he would help the hospitals secure resources through the company’s headquarters in Nashville. He too was familiar with the decades-old models that predicted total devastation if a big enough storm overwhelmed the city’s levees. He had a particularly bad feeling about Katrina.
Lagarde looked younger than 48, with a boyish face and dark hair parted on the side. A graduate of the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, he had become a hospital CEO at 26, one of the youngest in company history. He was division president by the time he was 37. Like Dr. Ben, he was a New Orleans native. But after more than two decades with HCA, he epitomized corporate culture; he knew how to follow unspoken rules and respect the hierarchy, which he himself had climbed quite high.
It was little surprise that he and Dr. Ben would eventually collide.
Sunday night, as the winds intensified, residents and nurses on the day shift at Charity gathered in the on-call room on the 16th floor. Off-duty, they cooked hot dogs, ate chips and dip, and played poker. There was nothing they could do but try to relax, so most avoided television coverage of the storm and played video games on the Xbox.
At about 3 Monday morning, both hospitals lost power and the emergency generators kicked on.
Katrina made landfall at 6:10 a.m. with 125-mph winds. Palm trees were uprooted; light poles broke in half; trees bent to the ground.
As the storm’s eyewall passed through the city, the windows at Tulane bowed inward. Staff moved patients out of their rooms and into the hallways. Jim Montgomery, Tulane’s president and CEO, looked across the street and watched Charity’s awnings rip free of the moorings and fly away.
If God’s ever angry, we’re going to lose big, he thought.
The storm blew out windows on Charity’s upper floors and destroyed the roof over the operating rooms. Charity was so old that its ORs had been built on the top floor of a 12-story wing, some say to take advantage of sunlight.
Now the hospital was without an operating room, sterilization equipment or critical laboratory equipment. Doctors and nurses could no longer do blood or urine analyses or conduct other tests. They converted an outpatient clinic on the second floor into a makeshift operating room.
On student nurse Sanborn’s unit on the fourth floor, staff secured sheets over the windows to protect patients from flying glass. They couldn’t see out, but they could hear debris bouncing off the roof. They heard windows on the floors above them blow out and shatter on the ground below.
In the sixth-floor medical intensive care unit, where Dr. Ben cared for critically ill patients Hunter Reeves and Preston Johnson, water poured through the ceiling, pulling down tiles and light fixtures.
Suddenly, the emergency power shut down in their wing. Medical staff knew the drill: They ran to connect bags to ventilator patients — including Hunter and Preston — and began squeezing them, manually pumping air into their lungs. Later, the staff ran extension cords to a Coke machine outlet in a wing that still had power. At least for now, they were able to restart some ventilators.
Soon after the eye of the storm passed through, Dr. Ben’s team mopped up the inch-deep water. With power temporarily restored, calm settled over the ICU.
At Tulane, Mel Lagarde surveyed the building. The hospital had suffered minor roof damage and broken windows, but not much else. He turned his attention to Garden Park Medical Center in Gulfport, Miss., the HCA hospital that had sustained the most structural damage.
By midday on Monday, Aug. 29, the sun peeked through broken clouds, and hospital employees poured out of their safe harbors to inspect the surroundings. Sharif Omar and others walked five minutes away to the Superdome, where parts of the roof were gone. The Hyatt Regency hotel reminded them of the federal building in Oklahoma City after the bombing, its face sheared off, curtains flapping in the breeze like surrender flags.
The damage to the city was evident, but nothing close to the doomsday scenario the models had predicted.
Many people said the same thing: New Orleans had dodged another bullet.
From a walkway, Sanborn saw a homeless man curled under the steps of the historic St. Joseph Catholic Church on Tulane Avenue. It struck Sanborn that the church had somehow protected the sleeping man in the storm, as if surrounding him with a magnetic field.
That night, the student nurse ducked outside to smoke a cigarette at the bottom of Charity’s emergency room ramp. Her hospital was on emergency power, but the rest of the city was black and quiet. There were no cars, and the stars shone like never before. Sanborn sat on a bench and curled her feet beneath her. She figured the worst was behind her. The recovery team would arrive in a couple of days, and she could go home.
About 10:30, Sanborn stood up to go back inside. For the first time, she noticed it: Where the ground had been dry, she stepped into water.
Where had this come from?
ON TUESDAY: The white noise falls silent — a frightening realization. Chapter 3 of 22.
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Comments
By MARY FINN
May 8, 2006 07:55 AM | Link to this
EXCELLENT FIRST TWO CHAPTERS. LOOKING FRWARD TO READING ENTIRE SERIES.
By Tamara
May 8, 2006 08:06 AM | Link to this
My heart goes out to everyone who went through Katrina. I’ve been through a Level 5 Tornado so I can imagine what the hurricane was like. And please don’t get discourage when people (especially Republicans) keep saying it’s time for them to be on their feet… stop being lazy. They have no idea what it’s like to have to struggle to rebuild from a devastating storm such as Katrina. Even though those who complain about Katrina victims utilizing federal aid months after the catastrophe need to go through a devastating storm just to understand how difficult it is to have to totally rebuild, I don’t wish this type of enormous grief on anyone.
By Ellen
May 8, 2006 09:46 AM | Link to this
I worked with Dr. Ben when I lived and worked in New Orleans. He is a dedicated physician and a true supporter of Charity Hospital and the patients it served. I have already read his personal account of some of what happened at Charity Hospital during Hurricane Katrina; and it made me cry. I look forward to the rest of this series.
By Ed
May 8, 2006 10:03 AM | Link to this
It doesn’t surprise me for an instant that the first reply to this article throws blame on Republicans and, therefore, on President Bush. New Orleans was not in any way prepared for what was coming and did not plan. The city is well-known for the corruption and incompetence of its government and this has been shown well by the actions and inactions of Ray Nagin. The greatest examples are that he waited and waited to order a mandatory evacuation and, when he finally did, it was too late. Additionally, the city’s school busses sat parked when they could have been used to get the people who wound up at the Superdome and the convention center out of harm’s way. Government closest to the people is the most effective, and New Orleans’ government failed miserably. It has been eight months since Katrina. Those people who are sitting and waiting for others to do everything for them deserve no more.
By Linda
May 8, 2006 10:16 AM | Link to this
I was an RN at Ohio State University Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, years ago so I know what it’s like to have worked in a large hospital. I have been lucky enough to have never been in a major hurricane or disaster. This article brings me to tears just thinking about the patients, their families and the agonies of their thoughts. I can feel for the doctors and nurses who worked there and I KNOW that they all did their utmost to take care of their patients. No one works in the medical field unless they care. God Bless you all.
By Arleen Ristau
May 8, 2006 10:16 AM | Link to this
Congrats to Jane Hansen for a fantastic report, she should turn it into a book. (I wish I had the last 20 chapters NOW!)
New Orleans has had my heart for many years, the people who live there are very special! Maybe now the rest of the world will know WHY.
Thank you AJC for printing this article!
Arleen
By JP
May 8, 2006 10:47 AM | Link to this
Ed, you seem awfully defensive. The Republicans and right-wing radio ARE the ones showing no understanding or compassion (remember “compassionate conservative?”) for Katrina victims. I thought Tamara’s comment was entirely accurate.
[But then you come here and see the devastation up close, and discover that things are far worse than you imagined….Two weeks ago, Douvillier [Fire Department captain] found two brothers in the same house, casualties forgotten by time. And he believes there are many more. A dog led one colleague to an attic in the Lower Ninth Ward that contained a large, rotting fish, a sign that some of the remains may simply have washed out to the Gulf….
Across St. Bernard you see houses that are collapsed like accordions. You see holes in the roofs, where perhaps the residents escaped by helicopter. You see seaweed clinging to other roofs and no water line along the windows, which tells you that these entire blocks, this entire neighborhood, was utterly submerged. And then there is the unsettling quiet. There is no one for miles around — no traffic, no children, no dogs.The front yards of these upscale houses are now piled high with rubble, from slabs of plywood to mildewed rugs. Wherever you look, normal life has been obliterated. How does journalism convey that? How do you communicate that so many months later, vast swaths of a major American city remain paralyzed?
But it is still news, if news is defined as a catastrophic event that alters a community and a country forever. [Brian] Williams, dismissing some viewer complaints and nasty e-mail saying that he devotes too much air time to this city’s struggles, stays on the case, as do a handful of other television and print journalists.
That [rebuilding and moving on] is not possible in New Orleans. Yes, many people are tired of the Katrina saga. In a world filled with problems large and small, in a business that gravitates toward the latest buzz, the up-to-the-minute news flash, that’s easy to grasp. If people saw what I saw, however, they would understand why journalism’s work here is not done — not by a long shot.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/05/AR2006050501744.html)
By JP
May 8, 2006 10:48 AM | Link to this
Ed, further: when you elect people to govern who don’t LIKE government, they usually don’t do it very well. Case in point: the Bush administration.
Prove me wrong, I dare you.
By Sheri
May 8, 2006 11:04 AM | Link to this
Escellent! If I had all 22 chapters I would not be able to put in down. It should be made into a book.
By Thom
May 8, 2006 11:58 AM | Link to this
We hope to never see an incident such as this but it is inevitable to happen. We have a government system that is tiered with one overlooking the other. If one fails the other should pick up the ball. After Katrina the government failed from bottom to top. We can’t get over this issue because we are spending too much time pointing fingers. I don’t care who was wrong and I could care less which party failed. It is time for someone to make it right and help these people to recover. The key word is PEOPLE. These are people who are in need. These are our brothers and sisters crying out for a shoulder to lean on. As a nation we need to be there for them. God Bless America!
By Janet Shrader
May 8, 2006 12:40 PM | Link to this
Reading this is like a gripping novel; leaving us at a cliff-hanger, waiting until the next installment appears!
By Rick
May 8, 2006 01:59 PM | Link to this
You people are STILL blaming republicans…instead of questioning why the busses were moved to the lowest part of the city, and the pump operators sent home…. You REALLY need to smell what you are shoveling. I wend down for 7 weeks and worked in the Lindy Boggs (mercy) hospital recovery project. Row after row of busses are parked just up the block, in neat rows with water lines on the sides…
Where have the BILLIONS of dollars sent to work on the levees, over the last 20 years, gone???
Much of the pain of THIS disaster could have ben avoided except for the extraordinary opportunity to play politics with Washington!
By Mel
May 8, 2006 02:44 PM | Link to this
Typical excuses. Blame Bush, blah, blah, blah, Oh, cry me a river….
N.O. Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco were and are still to blame the most. He failed to act and she failed to secure enough Nat’l Guard troops on hand (and no, they weren’t all in Iraq either). The state didn’t want to foot the bill for it that’s all! They both failed to act and passed the buck. FEMA got that passed buck then then also failed too.
Hurricanes come and go all the time (See Florida), but it is up to LOCAL First responders to get the job done FIRST! Did Bush ‘fail’ during all previous Hurricains in 2005? No, because Florida had a plan and followed it. N.O. is still a banana republic where cronyism not competance is the way to go.
By rosalyn
May 8, 2006 04:26 PM | Link to this
I’m so glad Jane wrote this story I beleive that the world should know what happened the good and the bad the NEWS only told the bad things and showed the worst.what bothered me the most about are people was when people started lieing and stealing from people that were trying to help them and that what makes it hard to open your heart to people because of trust.People will never forget katrina I think this story should be put in a book right next to 911 to tragic days.My heart goes out to the families who lost loved ones continue to stay strong.
By Patti Evans
May 8, 2006 05:56 PM | Link to this
Let’s see the truth for what it is. There may be bad politics in LA., however the Corps of Engineers did a very poor job in building and doing upkeep on the levees. Will they do anything about it? Or will they rebuild the levees only to pre-Katrina and see history repeat itself. I have no faith in the Corps to ever make New Orleans safe enough for me to return. I have now seattled in GA
By Tammy in Niceville, FL
May 8, 2006 08:18 PM | Link to this
This is excellent work. It is written so that the intensity of the situation comes out in the words. I find myself glued to my computer screen. Keep it up!!
By Alyson
May 8, 2006 11:26 PM | Link to this
What a wonderfully written piece! I sit with great anticipation for the coming chapters. I have a friend who’s mother was stuck in Charity for days, and now suffers from PTSD, this story brings me a little closer to the hell that he has lived since that fateful day last August. Keep the faith, Chris. The healing may take a while, but it will get better with time.
By Ginny Kiernan Dahlberg
May 9, 2006 05:05 PM | Link to this
My brother, Michael Kiernan (a pulmonary neonatologist), was at the head of the efforts to evacuate Tulane Hospital. With some engineers, he worked out a helipad on the roof. When the last patient, family and staff member had left, he was asked to remain and evacuate Charity; he risked his life to do so - dodging sniper bullets with other staff to get folks in Charity and nearby hotels over to Tulane and up to the helipad. Not a single patient endured triage at the airport, or being turned away - a bed was arranged for every patient before they left Tulane. I’ve always been very proud of my brother - these days, I’m even prouder!
By Kyle T
May 10, 2006 02:52 PM | Link to this
I think that this has been a a terrible mistake. Every body has been blaming G. Bush. It doesn’t mattter what he did. They had a chance to evacuate and this could have been a nothing wrong if they had not done it.
By Sharon
May 11, 2006 01:08 PM | Link to this
This reply is to Kyle.
There are no simplistic answers. Even if the buses of the school system, a separate agency from the city with its own governance, were made available and even though the traffic flowed in the same direction, away from the city, and even though those without fiscal means to leave were able, the resulting traffic jam would have given rise to more human suffering. If you please, review the Houston exodus for Hurricane Rita.
In addition, I can understand, (if I really stretch), the belief that New Orleanians should have planned and acted accordingly.
However, I hope we don’t repeat that statement if a devastating earthquake hits San Franscisco or a tsunami attacks Los Angeles or Seattle.(God forbid.)
Human suffering on any scale, at any time, in any place is human suffering.
This is to Mel ( May 8th) I and many others have cried a river. Thank you for letting me know that I can now give this deluge of grief to you. As I stood before my mother’s and father’s home in the ninth ward, where I and my siblings were taught the meaning and responsinbilty of citizenship and the value of education and self-reliance, where my World War II veteran father used the GI Bill to realise the American dream, I sobbed.
I have seen people stand bewildered on television when a disaster happened… I felt for them but i had no idea how it felt… I know now.
I would not wish this on anyone. as the adage goes, “Before you judge someone /something, walk in their/ the shoes.”
This series is about the human spirit and its ability to survive.
Keep reading.
By Deyonca
May 16, 2006 11:34 PM | Link to this
First and foremost I would like to Thank all of you who have assisted with the recovery efforts in New Orleans and to all of those who helped many displaced residents start rebuilding their lives after the storm. I am a New Orleans native and my family and I decided to evacuate before the storm came ashore.
I am trying to understand why RTA(public transportation) and school busses were not used to evacuate residents who were unable to leave. In New Orleans, there’s a law on the books stating that you cannot force someone to leave their home. Our Mayor stated that residents were responsible for each other not him and that we were supposed to take care of one another. Well that would be difficult when many residents did not have the transportation or the financial means to leave the city.
The levees that were breeched by the London Avenue Canal were just repaired within 9 months prior to the storm. I know this because I lived less than 2 blocks away from this canal. Funding has been getting cut for the upkeep of the levees for the past 3 years. Also, the levees were not built to withstand category 3 winds.
I am not placing blame on any political party but somewhere down the line, someone dropped the ball. Yes, Florida has been hit by hurricanes over and over again and they have recovered. However, the major difference between Florida and New Orleans is that New Orleans is below sea level.
And as far as those who were affected by the storm needing to get up off of their butts and not wait for anymore assistance from the government Ed, we pay taxes too. And most of us who lost everything (my house along with my mothers’ was 15 feet under water)are still waiting for some sort of compensation for our property.We are struggling to pay bills here as well as New Orleans. So until you have been in a natural disaster and lost everything, then and only then you have the right to say what a person should and should not be doing.