Monday morning at 6:30 am all hell broke loose. During the night Sunday night, the wind picked up, the rain picked up, but I had NO IDEA that things would get so bad.
About 6:30 that morning, the worst of the winds started. The eye wall (the western part of it at least) was going to be passing over us in about an hour, but the winds were already horrible. The lights had flickered all night long (see my previous phone post), but we still were running on electricity and not generator. We also had several "code red" calls that night because the fire alarms kept tripping. I was down on my floor getting ready to give report when I heard that the roof came off of the 6th floor and the ceiling caved in on a day shift person sleeping up there. Well, guess who that day shift person was? MY ROOMMATE. My sleep room had completely collapsed, and in it was ALL OF MY BELONGINGS. My pillow (my Ralph Lauren pillow at that...not because of the brand, but because I can only sleep on certain kinds of pillows---tightly packed HARD but thick pillows...RL's are the best.), my two blankets, my towel, my toiletries and my camera battery charger were demolished. The room had full scale hurricane winds blowing through it. Luckily my roomie got out unscathed and saved my bag of clothes and my scrubs.
I went and surveyed the damage, but forgot to take pics. The 6th floor was uninhabitable and they started moving patients to other floors.
I then went back downstairs with my stuff in tow to find another sleep room. Thomas called me about then on my cell phone. The electricity went and our back up generator clicked on. While I was walking down the hallway, I heard a coworker of mine (on 3 south...I work on 3 north) scream and then the fire alarm went off and the operator called another code red. I took off running toward 3 south with Thomas on the phone and then said "I gotta go" and hung up. When i got to the end of the hall, MaryAnn was screaming for us to get the patients out of the rooms and there was an 80ish year old lady laying in the middle of the hallway, pale as can be, looking dead (she wasn't, she was breathing) and her husband (?) laying over her and crying and screaming. A nurse came up to me/us and was out of breath and shaking and crying and pointed to another room and said "there's still a patient in there." I ran to the room and tried to open the door and I COULDN'T BUDGE THE DOOR. It was sucked shut. Steven and Chuck came up to me, forced the door open, braved the torrential winds and got the light fixture/roof/ceiling off of the patient and rolled him out in his bed. The patient was out of it, but appearantly this was normal for him. He was NOT hurt. Come to find out the lady on the floor almost got SUCKED OUT OF HER WINDOW. Her window exploded out due to the pressure, and she was sucked toward the window, and her husband grabbed her and kept her from flying away. Jesus help us.
After all of this on 3 south, our windows on 3 north began to blow. The ceiling caved in these rooms and the patients had to sleep in the hallways. Our window in our nurse's lounge blew too and destroyed the room.
Windows began to blow all over the hospital. 2 North's window in the nurse's station blew INWARD, but no one was hurt. Here are some of the windows in the hospital...
In that last picture, you can see the water begin to rise with the storm surge. We got about 8 feet of water, which meant the whole first floor where the cafeteria, lab, pharmacy, ER, MORGUE got flooded.
I pulled patients out of rooms until 9:30 am that morning, and decided that I was going to find a place to sleep. Heh. All of the employee sleep rooms were either destroyed or full, so my 3 coworkers and I pulled up some space on the fifth floor lobby. The carpet was wet and hard and itchy (we had run out of linens by then), and there was constant traffic, screaming kids, etc. I did NOT sleep that day. Here is where I slept (on my bag...see that greenish/bluish indoor carpeting, where the cup is sitting?)
When I "got up" for my shift, I started to look outside. OMG. We were underwater! (not to mention I had to pee in toilets and there was NO RUNNING WATER BY THEN and the main building's generator had died. The "new building" had a working generator. I was also on my period--Day number 5/5, so I thought. This is TMI, I know, but it comes in to play later on). Here is the water I began to see after the eye passed. The water got higher later.
The "short bus"
Oh wait. There WAS an apartment complex there (remember in my previous entry? the apartment complex I pointed out??) Well, while I was "laying down", the storm caused a gas line to break and the apartment burnt down. 50 people where holed up in that complex alone. The two stair wells were the only thing left. *note the water almost up past the windows on the house in the background. It only got higher*
The apartment complexes
Employee parking lot (this is before the surge crested)
That's MY EXPLORER. The silver one in the front. The red car underwater is Chuck's son's car. Liability insurance only on his car. Full coverage on mine.
Pep Boys
Wow. We were in for some tough times.
To be continued...
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