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Orthopedist carries supplies and patients by canoe through New Orleans flood
Duane Belongie, MD, and colleagues shuttle two premature newborns to a waiting rescue truck.
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Medical residents rose to the challenge as floodwaters rose in New Orleans, even using a canoe to shuttle supplies and patients in the days after Hurricane Katrina.
Duane Belongie, MD, an orthopedic resident at Tulane University Medical Center, Louisiana State University Hospital and Charity Hospital, fetched the canoe from his home as the storm approached. At one point, Belongie along with Allen Butler, MD, and Mike Cox, MD, rowed two premature infants to a rescue truck.
Courtesy of Duane Belongie |
It all started when Belongie received a “code gray,” the hospital’s natural disaster code, on Aug. 27, Belongie told Orthopedics Today. He was asked to arrive at Charity Hospital at 6:30 a.m. Sunday.
“Things were pretty crazy on Sunday, everybody speculating on just what’s going on with the hurricane, ‘is this the big one?’” Belongie said. “There was a lot of nervous energy.”
The wind had calmed and a few people arrived at the hospital Monday afternoon. The build up of problems appeared slow at first.
“We got several consults on hands, mostly smashed in doors,” Belongie said. “In the evening, this guy had fallen off a roof and had finally made it to the hospital, with a possible open elbow fracture … We had all kinds of problems trying to find an X-ray machine that would work. Somebody finally brought down a video fluoroscopy unit, one of the mini-CR X-ray machines … We had a guy with a broken wrist and some other problems, but really nothing major. It was pretty much because I don’t think anybody could get to the hospital.”
Belongie and his fellow staff had to postpone surgery for two patients who had not had severe open fractures.
“It was extremely hot, there was no air-conditioning, so the patients were essentially festering on the fourth floor, just itching to get out of there,” he recalled. “They had the medicines they needed, they had dressing changes, the nursing care was good, but we couldn’t take them to the operating room … They were stable, their vital signs were fine, they had external fixators on and a way for the infection to get out of the body, so we weren’t concerned that they were going to be septic. But under normal circumstances they would have gone to the OR for irrigation and debridement.”
As the floodwaters rose yet higher Monday night, Belongie and his fellow team members donned shrimp boots to negotiate about eight inches of water. On Tuesday, the flood had reached two to three feet. The storm’s flood meant anything but a flood of patients.
Power out, paddles in
Then Charity hospital’s electricity went out early Tuesday morning. Emergency generators started. However, the backup power would only last about one day.
That is when Belongie went to the parking garage to fetch the canoe, which luckily had no damage. Boats were scarce in the hospital area, so many people asked Belongie to run errands in his canoe. So he and his colleagues used the canoe to shuttle generator fuel and other supplies between Charity Hospital, University Hospital and Tulane Medical Center.