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The fight to save patients
Outside Lindy Boggs Medical Center, New Orleans was devastated by the storm. Inside, doctors were fighting to save the desperate and the dying
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Dateline NBC |
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KATRINA, ONE YEAR LATER |
Brian Williams anchored a one-hour documentary on Monday, the eve of the storm's anniversary. He updated viewers on many of the people he met while in the Superdome to see how their lives have been dramatically altered over the past year. |
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It is almost one year since Katrina slammed into New Orleans, destroying a city, stunning the nation, and raising questions about the competence of government at every level. On Dateline Friday, we return to New Orleans as NBC News begins several days of special coverage. When the levees failed that day, and government failed in the days after, the people of New Orleans quickly discovered the only help they could count on was from each other. And perhaps nowhere did the heroic efforts of a few save more lives than in one forgotten place: Lindy Boggs Medical Center.
The relentless flood that buried a city would strand hundreds of people inside New Orleans hospital Lindy Boggs Medical Center. Over three days, Dr. Johnson and his staff would take extraordinary measures, and face a series of agonizing decisions as they struggled to keep their critically ill patients alive.
Dr. Glenn Johnson, cardiologist, vice chief of staff at Lindy Boggs Medical Center: I’m just thinking, how many will die before we figure out how to get them out of here?
Dr. Johnson’s ordeal began last August 27th—the weekend before katrina hit. The doctor, a cardiologist and vice chief of staff at Lindy Boggs, had weathered many storms in his 12 years at the hospital, but this one was different.
Dr. Johnson: I had a very bad feeling about the storm.
Hoda Kotb, Dateline correspondent: You were scared?
Dr. Johnson: I was scared. And I knew I was heading into something that was not going to be good.
With the Category 5 hurricane barreling towards the city, Dr. Johnson’s instinct told him to evacuate—but his sense of duty drew him to the hospital.
Dr. Johnson: The winds are starting to pick up a little bit, and I’m just thinking “My God, what am I in for? What are my patients in for?”
At Lindy Boggs, things were bustling. About 120 patients and their families were holed up inside a brick four-story building. Some the staff members also brought family members with them. After all, what better place to ride out a hurricane than a hospital? Or so they thought.
Dr. Johnson: We’re checking on patients, seeing what our resources are. See what our staffing looks like. Just trying to settle the place down. We assumed for 48 hours.
On Monday morning, August 29th: Katrina came to New Orleans.
Dr. Johnson: You’d hear the windows all of a sudden exploding on the building.
The people inside Lindy Boggs snapped a few photos of the scene, as the wind and rain raged outside. But by Monday afternoon, it seemed the storm was blowing over.
Dr. Johnson: We were almost elated. Once the wind started to die down, we looked outside, we saw the amount of water, I’m going, “I’ve seen this before.”
Morning after the storm
But the next morning, Dr. Johnson could not believe his eyes. A massive flood had surrounded the hospital.
Dr. Johnson: I knew. I said, “We’re in trouble. We’re in big, big trouble.”
What the doctor didn’t know was that the entire city was in big trouble. Heavy rains flooded Lake Pontchartrain, the levees breached, and water gushed into New Orleans, stranding thousands.
All around Lindy Boggs, frantic neighbors who had been flooded out of their homes began desperately swimming toward the hospital for help.
Dr. Johnson: They began to panic and tried to swim toward the hospital. One of the worst sights was a man with about a 6 to 9 month old in this little inflatable, cheap flimsy thing. He had the baby inside, he’s trying to make it to the building. He goes under.
Kotb: So the baby was on its own for a while.
Dr. Johnson: On its own.
Eventually, the hospital would be overrun with about 500 people from the neighborhood. With no telephone calls coming in or going out, and with the water steadily rising, Lindy Boggs was quickly becoming an island of desperation. It would be up to Dr. Johnson and his staff to figure out how to save those inside.
Among his patients was 76-year-old Dall Thomas, a heart and kidney patient on dialysis. Dall’s wife Grace had decided to ride out the storm inside the hospital, thinking it would be one of the safest places.
Grace Thomas, wife of a patient: I’m going to go to the hospital that has generators. That will keep us going. And in three or four days, we’ll all be home again.
In the intensive care unit, another wife, Jessie Lasalle, held vigil next to her 32-year-old husband Carl, who had struggled with illness his whole life. Carl had just fought his way through a risky liver and kidney transplant.
Jessie Lasalle, wife of a patient: I was just praying that he was gonna make it through, which I knew. I had faith and I knew God was going to bring him through it.
Jessie sat in the room with her husband, along with the couple’s 5-year-old daughter Alicia.
On the same floor, George Andrews sat with his wife, Lashaira El-Amin. Lashaira was being treated for a minor infection, but as the flood waters rose, it was a more permanent condition that troubled George: she was paralyzed from the chest down.
George Andrews, husband of a patient: If there’s a situation where we’re going to have to be in water, how am I going to do it with her?
By now, a sea of water separated Lindy Boggs from the rest of the world. Patients like Dall, Carl and Lashaira, were completely stranded and things were about to get worse.
As the hours passed, water seeped into the hospital’s basement, flooding the generator. Suddenly, Lindy Boggs lost all power. They had no elevators, no lights, and something much worse—no electric ventilator machines to help critically ill patients, like transplant patient Carl Lasalle, breathe.
Kotb: When the power went out, your first thought when it came to your husband was what?
Jessie Lasalle: My God, the power went out and he was on the ventilator. What are they going to do?
The doctors and nurses had to find a way to help Carl and the other ventilator patients get air. For a while, they used hand pumps to blow oxygen into the patients’ lungs ...
Dr. Johnson: Having the nurses sit there with an ambu-bag. Squeeze the bag in order to get the patient to breathe.
Kotb: You’re talking about just squeezing it, and squeezing it.
Dr. Johnson: That’s correct.
Kotb: And so each squeeze is a breath?
Dr. Johnson: That’s correct.
And it wasn’t just the ventilators—when the power went out, dialysis machines that kept kidney patients like Dall Thomas alive shut down too.
Dr. Johnson: They know their clock is ticking. Cause without dialysis, they will die.
Grace Thomas: I just thought, how long can this go on? And I just figured that you know, someway, somehow God’s going to get us through. But I didn’t know how.
Grace could do nothing but sit at her husband’s bedside. Earlier, she had convinced her children to evacuate without her. Now, she was worried and alone.
Grace Thomas: I sat and looked at him. And I thought, all of my life, my children have all been with me, whenever I was in trouble. And I said, “Here my husband is dying, and they can’t get to me. There’s no way anyone can get to me." And I said “I’m just going to have to face this alone.”
Down the hall, 48-year-old George Andrews also sat, worried about his paralyzed wife Lashaira. With water surrounding the hospital, George feared that it would be impossible to get her out.
George Andrews: I could’ve swam out of there. I could, even after everything was over and the water came up. But my concern was how am I going to do this with Lashaira? How can I get her out of this?
Dr. Johnson: The water, originally from the storm, was coming down our stairwells like a river.
It was a scene playing out all over the city of New Orleans, which plunged into utter chaos and catastrophe as the days went on. People who’d been unable to get out were left stranded, dehydrated and dying.
At Lindy Boggs, the rising water began rushing onto the first floor. With no working elevators, the staff ran to move the patients up the stairwells.
Michael Gerhold, head of radiology, helped hand carry the patients.
Michael Gerhold, head of radiology: You just physically hold ‘em, and grab ‘em. And, bring ‘em up. We had four people to a patient sometimes.
24 hours after the hurricane, Lindy Boggs had been reduced to a dark and lonely building completely cut off from the outside world. With no phone service, the people inside tried to get a few text messages out to friends and family, asking for help. They had no way of knowing the people they were messaging probably needed saving themselves.
Dr. Johnson: That’s when we realized - we’re looking at each other and we’re thinking, there’s nothing going on here. We’re in trouble.
Kotb: No one’s coming to get us?
Dr. Johnson: We’re not even a blip on their radar. Nothing.
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