Home > Through Hell and High Water > Archives > 2006 > May > 22 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USChapter 17: BIRTHDAY OF LIFETIME -- AND AN UNEXPECTED GIFT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Multimedia
New Orleans — When Charity Hospital administrators asked for volunteers to escort patients across the street, then ride out with them on military helicopters, Granville Morse was one of the first to raise his hand.
Man, take care of patients and ride on a Black Hawk? said the emergency medicine resident. What could be better?
Others volunteered, but they all agreed “Granny” should go. This was his 34th birthday.
It was Thursday, Sept. 1, and for the first time that week, something the Charity staff had been told would happen finally did. Two military trucks with beds that sat high off the ground showed up to help evacuate the hospital’s sickest patients, ferrying them across the water to Tulane Hospital’s parking garage.
One of the patients was a boy named Jacob, about 8, who had been dropped off at Charity earlier in the week, along with five other critically ill patients from a nursing home. He had a feeding tube in his stomach and a tracheotomy for a tube into his lungs. He had no parents or other relatives by his side.
In Tulane’s stifling garage, Morse helped care for Jacob and other Charity patients. He was there when two of them died. And like Dr. Ben deBoisblanc, who had led the exodus from Charity, he watched as helicopters landed and took off from the rooftop, not with critical Charity patients but with healthy Tulane people.
Finally, at about 9:30 Thursday night, a Black Hawk arrived that could take three patients who could sit up and two on stretchers. One would be Jacob.
Who knows the patient? the man in charge of air traffic asked.
Morse raised his hand.
You’re going, the man said.
Morse climbed aboard the aircraft, and they began loading the patients. But Jacob’s spine board would not fit.
Just hand him to me, Morse said. Jacob was soaked in urine and sweat. Morse cradled the child in his arms.
Although it was dark, the young resident got his first glimpse of Katrina’s devastation that night as the helicopter headed for Louis Armstrong International Airport. Like others at Charity, his isolation had kept him from knowing the scope of the disaster. He cried as they flew over the city.
He could see tiny lights below — the flashlights of people still trapped on rooftops, waving for help.
The evacuation continued late into the night. John Holland would not rest until he got all of Charity’s critical patients out. The Georgia pilot had arrived the day before and volunteered to run air traffic control on the Tulane roof. If a military chopper with no seats landed, he put as many Charity stretchers on board as it could hold.
It was a painstaking process, just as it had been two days earlier when they evacuated Tulane’s critically ill patients. Chinooks, which could each hold 50 to 60 passengers, had suddenly quit coming. Jim Montgomery, Tulane Hospital’s president, heard from his daughter that Gov. Kathleen Blanco had just announced Tulane had been completely evacuated. She was only off by about 400 people, he thought.
Holland got on the pilot’s radio in the aircraft he had flown in on from Georgia. This is an emergency, he said. Could someone please come get these patients?
To Holland, it was the good Lord who then sent the Coast Guard. It was after midnight when its chopper arrived. Holland loaded the last three of Charity’s sickest patients; two were on ventilators.
After the Coast Guard chopper lifted off, there was silence on the rooftop. Many of those remaining broke down. The more than 30 critical Charity patients who had come to the Tulane parking garage before noon were finally gone. It had taken a little more than 12 hours to evacuate them. All but two had survived.
Under a starry night, about a dozen exhausted Charity staff lay down to sleep on the concrete floor of the parking garage. Dr. Ben was there. So was Granville Morse. He had flown back to the rooftop after dropping off Jacob and the other patients at the airport.
It was hot and humid, and some slept sitting up against the wall of the helipad to catch the slight breeze. Others slept one floor below the roof, where they had cared for patients. They scrunched up their scrubs shirts to lay their heads on. A few slept on stretchers.
Well, this is a good way to end my birthday, Morse thought. I’ll never forget this one.
Sharing the rooftop were Tulane staff members, including Associate Vice President Sharif Omar, Chief Nursing Officer Danita Sullivan, and Montgomery. Mel Lagarde, the Hospital Corporation of America executive who had stationed himself at Tulane, was also there.
Sullivan had finally gotten used to the heat, cutting off the pant legs of her scrubs to cool herself. It was still 90 degrees, and now she was freezing as sweat evaporated from her skin. She scrounged around and found three washcloths and placed them strategically on her body for warmth. Dr. Norm McSwain, Charity’s trauma director and Tulane medical school’s chief of trauma surgery, was tucked inside a red plastic hazardous materials bag, his head poking through a hole and resting on diapers.
Before closing his eyes, Morse got up to go to the bathroom. Trying to be discreet, he sneaked off to a corner of the rooftop. As he was about to relieve himself, a call came from above.
Hidey-ho, Doc!
Morse looked up. Huddled on the fire escape of a hotel about 10 feet away was a group of people. They had been living there to escape the heat inside the hotel. The helipad crew had seen them barbecuing food earlier in the week.
As they talked to Morse, the building’s owner appeared and asked whether he needed anything.
Morse looked down at the hard concrete.
Yeah, do you have any pillows?
The man disappeared inside. A few minutes later, dozens of pillows floated down from hotel to helipad.
Morse was elated. Wow, this is great.
The Charity and Tulane staffs were not on the best of terms. But just as death unites enemies in a cemetery, disaster had united them on the roof of the parking garage.
As Morse walked around the roof, he made no distinction between his Charity colleagues and the Tulane staff. Distributing his precious cargo, he felt a little like the pillow fairy.
ON WEDNESDAY: An explosion, a Marine’s arrival and a staff’s departure. Chapter 18 of 22.
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Comments
By Charles Cumiskey
May 22, 2006 02:55 PM | Link to this
Congratulations to the editors for the Hell and Highwater series. The writers have done an excellent job in detailing the horror of the situation and the loyality and determination of the medical staff in both hospitals. I look forward each day to the next episode! Thanks! CJC
By Lanette
May 22, 2006 03:54 PM | Link to this
This was humanity @ its finest! Love for one another in the Bible Love and Charity are interchangeable. I am so proud the racial disparities do not exist in all of us and that we can show Jesus not just speak about him. I am so proud that these people who showed love and kindness one to another regardless of any differences that may exist between them. How can we love a God that we’ve never seen and can’t love our brother and sister (humankind) that we do see? Jesus calls us a liar, so either HE is telling the truth and we are liars or He is a liar and we are telling the truth. God forbid! God is incapable of lying, so then we have the problem when we do not do those things. Then it says in the New Testament by the Apostle Paul, that “although we give all of our worldly possessions and had not charity (love) in our hearts, it profited us nothing!” Thanks for reporting the GOOD NEWS and please give my love and sincere thanks to those who reached out to help their brothers and their sisters. May God continue to bless and enrich ALL of OUR lives. Their are two thoughts that I’d like to leave you with…actually three 1) My very wise Great Aunt said: If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got” 2) He that lendeth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord 3) If your brother or sister has a need and you close up your bowels of compassion, woe be it unto you Again, stay encouraged and keep being part of the “Good News and solutions to the problem, and NOT part of the problem”.
By
May 22, 2006 04:38 PM | Link to this
This was humanity @ its finest! Love for one another in the Bible Love and Charity are interchangeable. I am so proud the racial disparities do not exist in all of us and that we can show Jesus not just speak about him. I am so proud that these people who showed love and kindness one to another regardless of any differences that may exist between them. How can we love a God that we’ve never seen and can’t love our brother and sister (humankind) that we do see? Jesus calls us a liar, so either HE is telling the truth and we are liars or He is a liar and we are telling the truth. God forbid! God is incapable of lying, so then we have the problem when we do not do those things. Then it says in the New Testament by the Apostle Paul, that “although we give all of our worldly possessions and had not charity (love) in our hearts, it profited us nothing!” Thanks for reporting the GOOD NEWS and please give my love and sincere thanks to those who reached out to help their brothers and their sisters. May God continue to bless and enrich ALL of OUR lives. Their are two thoughts that I’d like to leave you with…actually three 1) My very wise Great Aunt said: If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got” 2) He that lendeth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord 3) If your brother or sister has a need and you close up your bowels of compassion, woe be it unto you Again, stay encouraged and keep being part of the “Good News and solutions to the problem, and NOT part of the problem”.
By Stephanie
May 22, 2006 05:05 PM | Link to this
I have to quit reading this at work. Every day my eyes tear up and my makeup starts to run.
By melanie ehrlich
May 22, 2006 05:38 PM | Link to this
I am a professor at Tulane Medical School involved in teaching and research and was trying to save precious cancer and muscular dystrophy samples during Hurricane Katrina. I and my husband were rescued five days after the hurricane from the Tulane garage, thanks to the intelligent, skillful, and compassionate emergency work of leaders of HCA, which owns Tulane Hospital. Their excellence during the desperate time of the flood, which was caused by well-documented failures of the US Army Corp of Engineers, stands in stark contrast to the neglect and disdain of the Federal government for the lives and well-being of US citizens from Louisiana. When we were lined up with other clinical and non-clinical Tulane personnel and their spouses and children painstakingly snaking up the Tulane Hospital garage over the course of 10 hours, four days after the hurricane, we found out that HCA had to arrange helicopter rescue of patients and employees, rather than the US government. At that p! oint, our hearts sank with the realization that private enterprise, rather than the US government with its huge resources, was left to save US citizens from this hellish disaster. Your story is important for exposing the scandalous neglect of the welfare of New Orleanians by the US government, which persists to this day despite billions of government funds being spent mostly in a wasteful manner (money for hotels and not apartment vouchers, for politically connected sub-subcontractors often avoiding able local contractors, for excessive administrative costs, for grossly overpriced FEMA trailers, extremely excessive requirements for documentation to get any government grants for rebuilding when it is already in the public record how much flooding there was to all the houses in New Orleans, no federal money given to New Orleans homeowners for reconstruction other than their meager flood insurance).
However, a shortcoming of your article is your unwarranted criticism of Tulane and HCA personnel for not trying sufficiently to help Charity Hospital patients. In the early hours of Thursday morning, four days after the hurricane, Tulane and HCA personnel and their families lined up along the whole length of the 6-story Tulane Hospital driveway to await helicopter evacuation from the rooftop. When we were informed that patients were being evacuated too, there was nothing but sympathy for those patients. We witnessed Tulane doctors, nurses, orderlies, and even family members of doctors working so extraordinarily hard under third-world conditions to save Charity patients at the top of the Tulane garage. As we stood at the bottom of the garage?s driveway, near the back of the line Thursday morning, we were told that patients from Tulane and Charity hospitals were being driven up the driveway to the helicopter platform on the roof so that we would have to step to the side to mak! e a path for them. A woman Tulane Security guard alerted us by shouting ?Make a hole; patients coming.? Those of us on the bottom end of the line chanted ?Make a hole? and the chant was continued enthusiastically up the line of weary people, whenever another car or truck with patients delivered the patients to the top of the garage all during the day. There was no sense of resentment of patient evacuation, whether they were from Charity or Tulane. The cheering, referred to in your Chapter 14 article, when a helicopter approached was cheering that some people would be evacuated, with no sense of competition for evacuation between Tulane/HCA people and Charity people. Those of us in the rear of the line were in the garage all day, and, all night. Although the only available toilets were bags behind a hospital curtain in a corner of the garage and we had to sleep in the garage with only a thin hospital blanket separating us from the filthy garage floor, all of us waiting for he! licopters were incredibly orderly and self-controlled despite! our gra ve concerns of abandonment by our government and the horrendous explosion of a chemical tank not far away that awoke us at 4 AM.
My husband and I (native New Yorkers) are living and working in Baltimore now, while a new house is being built to replace our old flood-ruined home in New Orleans, and then will return to our adopted city. As for the naysayers about New Orleans, the recent unexpected floods in the Northeast and recollections about the San Francisco earthquake show the foolishness of geographic xenophobia. The courage of many New Orleanians during and after the storm and the outrageously shoddy treatment of this internationally famous city by the Federal government have inspired us to come back and take an active part in the healing of this unique and vibrant place. I think that New Orleans will be the most neighborly city to live in for a long time, where people are helping each other via neighborhood internet chat groups and meetings to an extent unparalleled in other urban eras. Where else by your very existence will you be making such a positive contribution to your community and city? T! his is well worth taking a chance on.
Melanie Ehrlich
By Gene
May 22, 2006 11:24 PM | Link to this
Granville, if you are reading this, are the people who gave you the pillows in these pictures?
http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/PublicServiceStories/large/186.jpg
http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/PublicServiceStories/large/185.jpg
I had a case of MREs with me and gave them to them since I figured that we’d get out sooner than they would and Mr Montgomery said to give them a couple of cases of water. I was a little concerned when I read earlier that some gang members had forced hospital personnel out of the motel next door, but on reading about the pillows I I take it they were talking about a different building?
By American Mother
May 23, 2006 09:22 AM | Link to this
As much as I love my pets, all pet lovers should read this article, to KNOW that, even though we love these animals, People have to come first. Imagine someone not making it out of these two hospitals, because the rescue of animals was going on - still it is heart breaking too. WE can only Hope and Pray that better plans are made for future events of this magnitude!!!
By Gene
May 23, 2006 10:10 AM | Link to this
Granville, if you are reading this, please email me. I think I have pictures of the people in the apartment building that gave you the pillows and would like to confirm that.
By Debra King
May 23, 2006 10:22 AM | Link to this
I applaud your article and thank you for your attention to detail. It is a story which needed to be told. However, I can add more. It seems to have been forgotten that University Hospital (NOT Tulane University Hospital - they are different) on Perdido Street, just across from Big Charity, was not evacuated until FRIDAY AFTERNOON after the hurricane. The staff and patients in this hospital were in exactly the same predicament as the other two hospitals - flooded building, no power, running out of food and medicine, and yet they couldn’t get anyone to help them. Frantic family members like me (my daughter was a third-year resident) were calling CNN, congressional offices and the AMA asking someone to pay attention because there was another hospital which had been left behind. The response from the AMA was that Tulane University system had used private funding for their helicopters, and that the public hospitals were dependent on the Coast Guard and other rescue workers. Many of the doctors, residents and interns in University Hospital that day (including my daughter) were on the Tulane System payroll, yet no one thought to account for them or send help. They watched out the windows as Tulane Hospital and Charity Hospital were evacuated, and then the helicopters stopped coming. Salvation came in the form of a small boat of Reservists from south Mississippi. They spotted some hospital staff standing in a doorway and stopped to ask “hey, ya’ll need a ride?” The hospital staff responded that there was an entire hospital in need of evacuation, to the surprise of the reservists! They radioed their base camp, and finally the helicopters started arriving. The patients had to be carried on stretchers up as much as 8 flights of stairs in the heat and the dark - it took all day. The employees and staff were finally evacuated out about 3:00 on Friday afternoon.
It is notable that after being evacuated on buses to Houston on Friday, a group of Tulane residents turned around and went back to Baton Rouge the very next day and put themselves to work in the relief effort. Their dedication and commitment were inspirational. For a month, they were sleeping on the living room carpet of a one-bedroom apartment and putting in 18 hour days during a time when they would have been justified in evacuating to the comfort of home and the arms of frantic family members. In almost every case, the doctors they were assigned to during normal times were absent, having evacuated. These young students threw themselves back into the fray because it was the right thing to do. They rode with ambulance crews back into the city to treat injured rescue workers. Some set up immunization stations on the New Orleans streets to administer vaccines for tetanus, hepatitis, etc to combat the filthy conditions encountered by the rescuers. Some worked with the remaining hospitals to open clinics so AIDS patients could resume their treatment regimen. One of these yound people was a brand new intern who had only been in New Orleans for a month when Katrina hit. They ALL grew up in those 30 days. They were phenomenal. This is just one of the many, many stories of the Katrina aftermath.
By Sonji
May 23, 2006 11:31 AM | Link to this
Morse is a God send as well as so many others that did not put them self first but showed what caring really means. He was Jacob’s Angel. It is amazing that there are these types of stories of survival in this day and age in this country when I read them and see pictures a think I am looking at a Third World Country. And I can only Wonder Why?