an interesting email was forwarded to me, it originated from the Chairman and CEO of HCA Hospitals, Bill Frist's company:
"I would like to give you an update on our disaster relief efforts in New Orleans, as of 1:30 PM CDT Thursday. The evacuation from Tulane Hospital continues by helicopter; we are now down to 7 patients and hope to have those evacuated by late afternoon. Quite frankly, this process has been slowed down by interference from local and federal bureaucracies at various times, including the commandeering of some of our contracted helicopters. We hope to have this problem straightened out now thorough HHS and FEMA, but there is no guarantee we won't face this problem again.
Currently, we have between 12 to 20 helicopters involved in the evacuation at any one time. We have just brought in two larger Blackhawk helicopters and are bringing a 30 passenger Russian Vladimir helicopter from Florida, thanks to the contacts of our Niceville Florida CEO, Dave Whalen...
We have also helped Charity Hospital, which had 21 critically ill patients needing immediate evacuation.
We are also in the process of evacuating our staff, doctors and family members still in place at Tulane and are now down to about 570. We have staged buses at the New Orleans airport, guarded by police and SWAT team members from Lafayette. As we evacuate our employees and families, they will be taken to shelters we have set up in Lafayette. We have pre-positioned food, water, clothing and other supplies and will continue to take care of our people as long as necessary. We have told all our affected employees they will remain on payroll indefinitely and will, if they desire, relocate them and provide them with employment at other HCA facilities across the country.
Lakeside Hospital and DePaul are both closed and boarded up with all employees safely evacuated. Our Lakeview Hospital, across Lake Ponchartrain in Covington, is fully operational, but still on emergency power. We brought in a portable CT scanner to beef up the trauma capabilities at the hospital. GArden Park in Gulfport is also fully functional, but, again, still on emergency power. We have repair crews at work there. Our hospitals in Lafayette and Alexandria are full, both from patients we evacuated as well as local patients.
As I write this, security is our biggest concern, not just in New Orleans, but at all our Gulf Coast hospitals. We are sending in additional resources to help and we have our hospitals locked down, but as more refugees pout out of New Orleans with no infrastructure to take care of them, the situation is becoming increasingly tenuous."