Enhancements to Hospital Resiliency: Improving Emergency Planning for and Response to Hurricanes

摘要

On September 1, 2008, at 10:00 a.m. CDT, Hurricane Gustav made landfall near Cocodrie, Louisiana, about 70 miles southwest of New Orleans, Louisiana. Hurricane Gustav was a strong Category Two hurricane, one mile per hour below Category Three. It dropped to a Category One hurricane four hours after landfall. Several days prior to Hurricane Gustav's arrival, government officials began discussing the logistics of evacuating the New Orleans area. As Hurricane Gustav approached Louisiana, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory city evacuation effective August 31, 2008. Officials estimate that 1.9 million people evacuated the Louisiana Gulf Coast, including more than 200,000 from New Orleans. After the city of New Orleans officially reopened on September 4, 2008 (it was closed for four days), power was restored to a majority of customers. Damage was limited primarily to downed trees and tree limbs, and street flooding. As of September 13, 2008, 43 deaths in Louisiana had been attributed to Hurricane Gustav, including six patients who reportedly died from natural causes while waiting to be evacuated. Cost estimates for Hurricane Gustav range from $8.5 billion to $18 billon, including $4.5 billion to $10 billion in property damage in Louisiana (both insured and uninsured losses); $1.5 billion to $3 billion in lost economic output during the primary evacuation period; and $2.5 billion to $5 billion in lost economic output from business interruptions. This report extends research previously conducted by the researchers about the maintenance of critical lifelines (water, power, hospitals) and critical infrastructure following extreme events. We examined hospital decision making in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Gustav in 2008. During on-site interviews in New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina, hospital administrators were quick to identify changes they intended to make to emergency procedures, most driven by the severely negative outcomes of Hurricane Katrina. The current research, which reports on hospital experiences during Hurricane Gustav three years after Hurricane Katrina, represents the 'post' phase of a naturally occurring 'pre-post' experiment by documenting the changes to emergency planning (precipitated by hospitals' experiences during Hurricane Katrina) and subsequently operationalized during Hurricane Gustav.