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CHAPTER 12: RESCUE OPERATION UNDER BATTLE CONDITIONS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Multimedia
New Orleans — Tulane Avenue was the River Styx — as foul and fearsome as the Greek mythological river of hell. Yet brave souls crossed the waters from the public hospital to the private one, in hopes of rescue.
Wednesday evening, Aug. 31, Dr. Ben deBoisblanc, nurse Dawn Pevey and critical care resident Dr. Jeffrey Williams made the journey in the back of a National Guard truck with four very ill patients.
Dr. Ben had chosen Hunter Reeves as the first to evacuate from Charity Hospital, knowing the 23-year-old had a treatable condition but would die without medical care.
He had Goodpasture’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease causing his body’s antibodies to attack his lungs and kidneys. Several days before Hurricane Katrina struck, his right lung had collapsed. As the truck neared the ramp to Tulane Hospital’s Saratoga Street parking garage, Hunter’s oxygen level plummeted. Dr. Ben and the others suspected his other lung had collapsed.
There was no time to get him to a sterile emergency room. Under Dr. Ben’s supervision, Williams stuck a needle into Hunter’s chest wall. Air hissed out, confirming the doctor’s hunch. Hunter was no longer getting oxygen.
Four people would have to sit on Hunter’s legs and body for what came next. They had grabbed an emergency kit with surgical instruments before leaving Charity, but had no anesthesia. They could only sedate him lightly with medication.
Using a scalpel and guided by flashlight, Williams cut a 2-inch slit near Hunter’s left nipple, then inserted a tube between two ribs, allowing the lung to expand. Dr. Ben assisted the young resident while pinning down Hunter’s flailing arms. It would have felt as if someone were stabbing him in the chest with a knife, then wiggling it around inside.
If the streets of New Orleans were hell, the skies above were Armageddon. Helicopters flew in all directions; fires lit up the horizon; gunfire erupted sporadically.
Some pilots stowed body armor — courtesy of the Hospital Corporation of America and a police department — beneath their seats to stop bullets aimed from below. Like the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in 1975, the exodus from Tulane was a chopper-borne operation.
Oh, my God, this feels like a war, Tulane’s chief nursing officer would say, peering at the sky from the roof of the Tulane garage.
John Holland, the former military man acting as air traffic controller, put his arm around her.
Honey, you are in a war, he said. It’s just a different type.
If it felt like a war, it was also a well-honed military operation.
In two days, Tulane had set up a makeshift helipad, corralled nearly two dozen helicopters, fashioned an air traffic control system, organized patients into staging areas for evacuation, and arranged for each to be transferred to another hospital so care would be continued.
By Wednesday night, most of Tulane’s 178 patients were gone, including 58 brought over from the Superdome before the storm.
It may not have been evident at the time, but when Dr. Ben and his colleagues arrived that night from Charity, they left behind an environment bordering on anarchy and stepped into a hierarchical system in which people had followed commands and moved in lock step for two days.
Frustration and anger had grown at Charity, where time and again they’d been told the government was coming to rescue them. When the owner of a Missouri-based helicopter company promised to send four helicopters for Charity’s sickest patients, Dr. Ben assumed those choppers would be dedicated to his hospital. But it wouldn’t work that way.
When those from Charity arrived at the garage, they were told to stay downstairs. For safety’s sake, no one could be on the helipad except those loading patients and bringing in aircraft.
As director of medical intensive care at Charity, Dr. Ben was used to being in charge. He didn’t like being told to wait anywhere.
Maybe the seeds of enmity weren’t planted that night, just nurtured. There had always been some bad blood between the hospitals. Tulane was the for-profit facility owned by the wealthy Hospital Corporation of America; Charity was the poor public stepchild, neglected by state government, always short of cash, yet depended on to serve the city’s poor and forgotten.
After an hour, a truck came down to the first floor and carried Hunter to the rooftop, where he was loaded onto a medevac and taken away. Then the real waiting started.
For the next two to three hours, Dr. Ben and the others watched as helicopters landed and departed while their three critical patients suffered. One, 25-year-old Preston Johnson, began bleeding from the nose and mouth.
Finally, Dr. Ben radioed Charity to find out what had happened to the four promised helicopters — and learned they had come and gone. Other than the medevac that took Hunter, evidently the other three had carried out Tulane patients.
Dr. Ben was outraged. The government had abandoned them, and he felt Tulane was doing the same.
Yelling, swearing, he ran to the roof and demanded that his patients be evacuated immediately. They had no way back to Charity, and he was frantic about their safety. Holland understood the doctor’s desperation. He was also aware that the physician knew nothing about helicopters and rescue operations.
Doc, I’m on your side, Holland quietly told him.
Late Wednesday night, thanks to Holland’s military contacts, a Black Hawk that had no seats landed; it could take patients on stretchers. Holland put Preston and the other two Charity patients on board. Dr. Ben, Williams and nurse Pevey climbed in.
As they lifted off into the black, moonless night, Dr. Ben had a sense of the surreal. The military pilot wore night vision goggles, and Dr. Ben, wearing a headset, listened in on the communication in the cockpit. OK, slide a little bit left. Slide a little bit right. The buildings were so close, he felt he could reach out and touch them.
After about 10 minutes, Dr. Ben saw on the distant horizon what looked like Emerald City. As the chopper drew closer, he spotted a familiar sign for I-10. Then suddenly the sky lit up as they landed on a cloverleaf bathed in blinding lights. It reminded him of the movie “Apocalypse Now.” The lights belonged to ambulances — dozens of them — sitting on the highway.
Dr. Ben jumped out and approached a driver.
What are you guys doing here? he asked.
We’re waiting.
How long have you been waiting?
For three days, the driver told him, for patients who had never come.
ON FRIDAY: Two mothers learn the fate of their sons. Chapter 13 of 22.
Comments
By janet
May 17, 2006 02:35 PM | Link to this
These stories are very touching. However, New Orleans wasn’t the only city affected by Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans was flooded. Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Waveland, Gulfport and Biloxi beachfront was leveled. But you never hear about any of that. Don’t get me wrong, everyone affected by this hurricane has a lot of healing and rebuilding to do and I pray every day for all of them. I just wish the focus weren’t on one city.
By kevin
May 17, 2006 03:06 PM | Link to this
I had the privilege of working in the Intensive Care Unit at Charity Hospital from 1993-1998. I consider Celeste and Ben, and the other staff at Charity to be heroes. It was truly agonizing not being able to be there for friends and former colleagues during Katrina and after. This is a story that needs to be told over and over again.
By Renee
May 17, 2006 03:24 PM | Link to this
Each day I read the chapters and feel like I have to be reading a fiction book. I have to fight back the tears when I realize what the everyone involved went through. My heart and prayers go out to anyone affected by Hurricane Katrina and I hope and pray that this doesn’t happen again and even if it does, we as a country are prepared to handle whatever happens.
By Doug
May 17, 2006 03:55 PM | Link to this
To Janet: You are missing the point. The articles are not about how Katrina effected one city, or another. The articles are about comparing and contrasting how two competing hospitals handled the greatest natural disaster to hit our country. Will you have a plan for your next disaster, or will you (like Charity) choose to rely on our government to intervene?
By JOSHUA
May 17, 2006 04:08 PM | Link to this
No offense to you Janet, but the focus isn’t on many of the other cities because they aren’t huge metro areas with hundreds of thousands of people who can’t get out. It is ashame that your beachfront condos and restaurants were destroyed…
By zig
May 17, 2006 04:14 PM | Link to this
The stories are beyond ‘touching’ and thank you Ms. Hansen for your great writing. And no one has forgotten about the Mississippi & Alabama Gulf Coasts as well as the folks in east Texas and western Louisiana as a result of Rita. Some stories are meant to be told and this is one of them. It just so happened to unfold in New Orleans. Believe me we all wished it hadn’t.
By denise walker
May 17, 2006 07:49 PM | Link to this
I am a Charity Hospital who has been displaced by Hurricane Katrina and I understand fully Dr. Ben’s frustration. Charity Hospital has ALWAYS been treated like a stepchild and Tulane the “golden” child. The patients at Charity have always been at the bottom of the todem pole because of their level of poverty and lack of private insurance, but the doctors and nurses of Charity have more heart and compassion than the entire staff of the “private” sector put together. Ms. Janet I am so glad and grateful that you care enough to even address this horific nightmare that the people of the gulf coast have had to endure. Thank you!
By Linda
May 18, 2006 12:28 AM | Link to this
I’m so glad to see the story of Charity being told. I worked there for nearly 10 years, having left last May to move cross country. I felt helpless after the storm. I was able to get through by phone to my old unit, where the situation was dire. I was one of several providing some connection to the outside world. I’ll never forget having to tell my friends that CNN was reporting they had been evacuated. In reality they were running out of food & afraid they had been completely forgotten.
But through it all that “only at Charity” mindset prevailed. In the lobby is a sign: Charity Hospital: where the unusual occurs & miracles happen This story helps to demonstrate that spirit. The staff of W-900 did everything in their power to keep up their spirits & those of the patients & families in their care. They found ways to keep themselves entertained to help pass the time & lighten the mood, even while desperately trying to ensure the safety of their very ill patients. They made banners to hang outside to remind anyone who could see that they were still there & would not give up hope. I’m so proud of all of them while incredibly saddened by the horrors they experienced & the uncertainty of the future of that spectacular hospital.
By Gene
May 18, 2006 12:52 AM | Link to this
I understand what you mean amd it hits me at times too. After coming back from Tulane, my son and I were sent to Mississippi a couple of weeks later. I had seen the devastation from the air as we flew the coast from Pensacola to New Orleans, but nothing prepared us for the total hell that awaited us on the ground in Waveland. We spent a week working there with the Florida State EOC and I cried as we got on interstate 10 to head back to Florida because there was so much left to do. I understand what you are saying, but Jane is writing a very limited story about an action that took place in a theater full of facinating stories…not all of which can possibly be told in even a single newspaper, let alone one story.
By Abbi
May 18, 2006 08:11 AM | Link to this
Jane, This is an outstanding series. It’s hard to wait for the next chapter to appear each day. Kudos to you and the AJC for doing this.
By Sister of a Katrina Victim
May 18, 2006 10:41 AM | Link to this
Joshua, how dare you imply that everyone on the Mississippi Gulf Coast just had a condo or restaurant destroyed. ALL the businesses are damaged or destroyed. Those “condos” were homes, not vacation homes. My sister’s home (not a condo on the beach) was 27 feet under water and has yet to be rebuilt. They are facing another hurricane season in a trailer!
I understand that this article is about the two hospitals in NO, but NO has received the bulk of the press. Mississippi and Alabama are devastated because of a hurricane, not a flood they were unprepared for!
By karen
May 18, 2006 12:08 PM | Link to this
I lived in New Orleans for 15 years - went to grad school at Tulane and worked at Charity Hospital. I have family in New Orleans and Mississippi. This is an amazing series of articles about a catastrophe. Don’t forget the coast of Mississippi!
By living in fl
May 18, 2006 12:36 PM | Link to this
Please people stop whining about who, what, when, where. There is never one entity that can tell the whole story. Take this story for what it is. A story depiciting what happened at Tulane and Charity. We must understand and have compassion. I reside in sunny Florida. I have been fortunate since moving here to always miss the worse. I do not believe that my luck will last forever and therefore am preparing for this hurricane season. I always thought that I would be able to pack up and go to a shelter or some place for shelter but this story has opened my eyes. I MUST BE PREPARED TO SAVE MYSELF AND MY FAMILY COME HELL OR HIGH WATER!!!!!!!! Please, read, refelect on what and who are important. Yes, I sympathize with everyone who lost something or someone during that tragedy but please keep in mind that loss is a part of life and we must all be responsible for ourselves.