Disaster Planning 101: Storm Stories from Hurricane Sandy

Transcription

1 JANUARY 2013 v The official newsletter for Compass Group, Support Services v mycrothall.crothall.com eurestservices.us/intranet sscserv.com/intranet Disaster Planning 101: Storm Stories from Hurricane Sandy Drills, disaster plans, and emergency preparation kits: it all seems like overkill until the mud hits the fan and everyone goes into Crisis Mode. Hurricane Sandy affected over 50 client locations in the metro-nyc area. 12 of their stories are told in this special edition of Connections. It s been almost 3 months since Superstorm Sandy left a path of death and destruction in 7 countries and 24 states, killing a total of 253 people and causing $65.5 billion in damage. Rated the second costliest Atlantic hurricane (only behind the 2005 hurricane, Katrina), this surprising storm is of particular note because of the disaster it brought to the Jersey shore and up into Manhattan. Most storms go out to sea before inflicting themselves on the mid-atlantic, New York, New England coastline. However, in two years, both Hurricane Irene and Sandy made landfall in New Jersey and New York and into New England, creating havoc for states whose disaster plans centered on winter snow storms. For Support Service teams in the North, the August 2011 Hurricane Irene was a wake-up call. Disaster plans that carefully prepared teams for road closures, power outages, and staffing issues were no match for the added crisis of hurricane flooding. Our client locations near water, along the shore and near rivers and bays, knew from Irene that if flooding occurred, generators and fuel pumps located on the lower floors or in the basement would be incapacitated along with power and heating plants. You ll read on the Connections page of MyCompass how the New Jersey shore accounts revamped disaster plans after Irene and how these changes paid off during Hurricane Sandy. However, you ll also read about the terrible and lasting destruction sustained by the barrier islands in New Jersey during Sandy and how that affected client locations. Command Center, Trinitas Medical Center For accounts closer to and in lower Manhattan, Hurricane Sandy was ten times worse. Even with disaster plans and organized command centers in play, they were no match for what newscasters called the Frankenstorm as it approached landfall on October 28, 2012, a few days short of Halloween. Coupled with Sandy s 1,100 mile-wide wind span was a Nor easter bearing down on New York City and New Jersey with wet and heavy snow. On pages 6-11, see how managers in lower Manhattan stood by disaster plan principles, helping three hospitals through major crises and back on the road to restoration. Continued on Pages 6-11 (Manhattan) Continued on the Connections page of MyCompass (New Jersey) IN THIS ISSUE 2 Vital Signs 4 Corporate News 6-11 Disaster Planning Currents 20 Best in Class 3 Heartbeat 5 Spotlight 12 Process Excellence 19 Just for Fun

2 Disaster Planning 101: Storm Stories from Hurricane Sandy Continued from Page 1 Disaster Planning Moves into Crisis Management: Manhattan Teams Manage Through Crisis This is a firsthand account of Crothall Healthcare support service managers in lower Manhattan and their stories about managing through the Hurricane Sandy crisis. We interviewed and recorded these stories of our NYC Health and Hospitals (HHC) managers on December 18, 2012, about six weeks following the storm s October 29 Manhattan debut. Don t miss New Jersey team Storm Stories on the Connections page of MyCompass. Ken Vlass Sr. Regional Manager, New York Once Hurricane Sandy reached New York, on October 29, there were a number of New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) facilities that were devastated by the storm along Coney Island, which is on the shore, and in lower Manhattan. Rich Rossi Regional Manager, EVS, HHC Coney Island Hospital CLOSED Let me set up the scene for you. Coney Island is a beach community. You ve seen it in a lot of movies. They ve got the famous Coney Island Cyclone; it s a roller coaster on the ocean. They also have the Parachute Jump that looks like the Seattle Space needle. 1 Monday evening, 10/29, at 9:36 PM, the tidal wave sirens in the neighborhood sounded. A large 6-foot tidal wave was rushing down Ocean Parkway, which is a 6-lane, secondary highway that runs in front of the hospital, and completely submerged every automobile and truck in the parking lot. Cars started exploding because of electrical fires. At the same time, the hospital took on 10 feet of water in the basement and 2 feet of water in all the clinical space on the first floor while they were actively treating patients! EVS assisted the hospital transportation team, against the surging flood waters, in emergency evacuating the patients to the upper floors of one building. It had power because it has rooftop generators where the other two buildings, including the ED, immediately lost power because, as the basement took on the water, all of the electrical and heating plant in the basement malfunctioned. Between EVS and the hospital PT departments it took about 8 hours to get all patients in the clinical space from the first floor to the upper floors. Soon thereafter, the rest of the facility lost power, and they were in a complete emergency state where the hospital had no power whatsoever. Cars were on fire in the parking lot. Every car in the parking lot was completely ruined, including cars of both staff and patients. They lost 538 cars in that parking lot, and the hospital was completely devastated. Now that lead to a complete emergency evacuation on Tuesday, early morning, at 6 AM. We had in the neighborhood of 278 patients, and each patient was singly transported in an ambulance to two of the other HHC facilities, one of which was King s County Coney Island team after the storm Hospital, and the other, which was Woodhall Hospital. They took on many of the patients. It was about 24 hours to do the complete evacuation. And then we started to assess the damage. Early on Tuesday morning, I was onsite with the Executive Director of the facility, indicating to him that it was a widespread catastrophe, and under the recommendation of Crothall Healthcare, we should bring in a National Disaster Recovery Team. He gave me the green light at 9:00 in the morning, and by 1:00 PM, the National Disaster Recovery Team, Signal Restoration, had trucks rolling into the parking lot, which allowed us to start the remediation process quickly. Right now, the hospital is still, 45 days later, completely closed. All walls and floors are completely gone on the first floor, and no clinical services are being offered, other than a minor urgent care center to the community because it s the only hospital that has a Level I Trauma Center in a 15-mile radius. 6

3 It s a unique situation here because of our relationship with the HHC Hospital Corporation, and we were asked to contract directly with the restoration company and provide oversight to this recovery process. So we re in the process of overseeing a $80 million restoration project at all three of the hospitals that were affected by Superstorm Sandy. Just taking a snapshot of Coney Island Hospital, after 45 days of throwing out furniture and cleaning out basements and removing other debris in all other areas, we just started Phase 1 of the reconstruction process. As for the Crothall team, our management staff was there. They slept in the building for 96 straight hours. And the employees were there for the better part of 72 straight hours. But our management staff was there from Monday until I was finally able to get some relief help to them by Friday morning. The reason for the delay in getting help was because all the public transportation was down for the first four days. Coney Island is kind of isolated by itself, so if you can t get public transportation, train, or bus, it s a big inconvenience. So our guys slept on hospital bed mattresses on their desks for the first four days, and none of them had food for the first 48 hours. I actually drove food in from where I live. I have an SUV, and on the first day, I loaded in non-perishables from the grocery store, water for our staff, and on the second day, I was able to find a McDonald s about six miles away that was open. I bought $400 worth of McDonald s and had to carry it out the door because there was no drive through service. Jeff Gontarek Regional Manager, New York Bellevue Hospital CLOSED Bellevue Hospital is an inner city facility located in lower Manhattan, off of 28th and 1st Avenues. We re about 300 yards from the FDR Drive as well as the East River, and during the storm event, we received anywhere between 8 and 10 feet of water. This happened during the day and into the evening on Tuesday, 10/30. So, as Rich explained, he got the surge earlier on Monday, 10/29. We actually didn t receive the surge until the better part of Tuesday into Tuesday evening. And the surge came from the East River, which is where we have Roosevelt Island and where the Brooklyn Bridge is that whole waterway right there. There are actually some pictures taken by staff members where the water had breached over the bulkhead and the signs above the FDR, approximately 15 feet off the highway, and the water level was about 5 feet from the bottom of the sign. There was probably a good surge of feet of water that made its way onto the FDR Drive and into the facility and basement. The basement is where all the support services are located, so that s where you have materials management, housekeeping, plant operations and maintenance, and where Au Bon Pain stores all of its food items. They also have a kitchen and a food processing area downstairs in the basement, so all those departments got hit with 8-10 feet of water. Within 2-3 hours after that occurred, the entire facility lost power, lost running water, and had no heat, and the 2 The FDR under water, Hospital for Special Surgery patients could not be safely evacuated for at least a day and a half. I arrived onsite on Wednesday, 10/31 and I met with the Executive team here, and my Senior Regional Manager Ken Vlass and I toured the facility. We tried to get to the basement, but we couldn t get there because of the water. However, we were able to tour all the patient units. They actually had extension cords going across the hallways, taped up with duct tape, trying to set up temporary lighting and keep the facility going for the first day and a half until they could safely evacuate patients. My colleague, Rich Rossi, has had previous experience with this type of disaster situation, and we worked together in helping to coordinate the restoration activities, mobilizing the restoration company onsite. They arrived within a day, on Thursday, 11/1, and we had a meeting with the executive team here and started moving forward with the clean-up activities as far as pumping water from the basement, providing temporary heat and temporary power. The hospital itself evacuated probably upwards of patients within a day and a half. To do this, they actually had to take the patients down one of the stairwells, which is about flights, using sleds. This was accomplished by hospital physicians, nursing staff, and trained EMT team. The patients were then transported via ambulance to other HHC facilities to include Metropolitan and Harlem Hospital. Mt. Sinai is another local hospital used, which is one of Crothall s accounts located in Mid-Town Manhattan. Connections JANUARY

4 Disaster Planning 101: Storm Stories from Hurricane Sandy You have to remember, the elevators in Bellevue Hospital were not running, and there was no heat, no electricity. Our EVS team members had to walk up 20 flights of stairs each day to get to the patient care areas to clean the rooms and provide the services needed during this difficult time. The EVS team members need to be applauded for their dedication and amazing efforts. JEFF GONTAREK: Along the same lines, with our management staff, most of our managers were here four-to-five days straight. Again, there was no food or running water, and the whole part of lower Manhattan was dark. But, we had staff members who live locally volunteer to go home and bring food back for the managers and their colleagues, including bottled water. So, it was a real team effort. Most of the employees were here round the clock for three to four days. The Crothall management team was involved in the command center, working with the restoration company in obtaining briefings twice a day and helping to coordinate the activities. Since we had 8-10 feet of water in the basement, flooding the elevator pods in a facility that has 23 floors, obviously, after two days, there was a lot of medical waste and regular trash collecting up on the floors. So we had to find a way to bring all of that down with none of the elevators operational. So all of our housekeepers, with masks and gloves on, made a human chain in one stairwell all the way down 23 flights of stairs, and for three days Bellevue Hospital 23-story human chain straight, we passed not only medical waste, but also regular trash as well as soiled linen down the stairwells. Once it finally made it to the outside, it was taken to a temporary compactor area. What s interesting is, no one complained; everybody understood that we were in a disaster mode, and everybody rolled up their sleeves. Our office personnel ladies who typically do our payroll and answer the phones they were in the stairwells right next to the staff with gloves and masks on, passing down the trash. It was all hands on deck, and we did whatever we needed to do. After a week, senior administrators wanted to reopen our five-story ambulatory care building, which is in front of the hospital. We worked with the restoration company, temporary agency staff, our own staff, and we actually had managers from other facilities come in to assist us. In the span of about four days, we re-opened those five floors. To do that, we had to terminally clean, strip, and refinish five entire floors so that they could start seeing patients and helping the community. After that, as recent as last Monday, we re-opened our emergency department, which is a series of five different modules with the ED. And within a span of about five days, we re-opened the entire ED. All the curtains came down, we washed walls, washed grids, and we had probably sixty people working in there round the clock for five days. So, they were able to reopen the ED on a limited basis last Monday [December 10]. Bellevue Hospital Ambulatory Care opening Dealing with something like this it s a learning experience. The fact is that patients were still in the facility here without running water and without any power, and obviously, they were still using the bathroom facilities. So I said to a couple of my colleagues I can t imagine what these folks went through during Hurricane Katrina at the Superdome when I saw first hand what kind of impact not having power, heat, and water and no running toilet facilities had on this 23-story facility. We actually had some people throughout the hospital breaking down and crying due to these primitive working and living conditions. I m happy to say that [as of the writing of this report] the facility is now on its way to recovery. I think if anything good comes out of this, I think we ve had a really good opportunity to really collaborate with different departments and facilities and food services. It s really brought everybody together for the common good to do what s r ight, and I m glad we were a part of it. 8

5 3 Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital East River There is also another facility called Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital, which is another HHC facility, and which sits on Roosevelt Island in the middle of the East River. You have to remember that Coler- Goldwater actually had water on both sides, and that same surge hit them as well. That hospital houses, between both facilities, over 1,000 patients. They lost power for the same reason Bellevue and Coney Island did. The only way Jeff and I managed to get to Coler-Goldwater on Day 3 of the storm was to take a tram across into the East River. There was no other transportation provided. So I have to say, that Jeff and Rich and our entire management team and the EVS staff of all these facilities went above and beyond, even during a time when their homes were flooded, they couldn t get home, and they had children they hadn t seen for days. They volunteered to stay over, and they had no food for a number of days. They slept on cots; they slept on floors. They had to walk up 20 plus flights of stairs in order to serve the patients. It s an amazing story. JEFF GONTAREK: The other thing I wanted to add, is that on the first night, the backup diesel-powered generator ran out of fuel because the pumps that help supply fuel to the generators failed when the basement became flooded. The National Guard was called in to assist alongside our EVS and facility staff and managers. They formed a human chain up 20+ floors and passed 5 gallons of diesel fuel up to fill the generator. JEFF GONTAREK: Senior leaders within HHC have publicly and privately said to Ken, Rich, and me, they don t know how they would have gotten through this without Crothall s support and our ability to help manage this restoration project with Signal Restoration. What is interesting is, Ken, Rich, and I look at it like, it s just another day. We re here to provide support and do whatever we can to add value. It s challenging for us, but we re here to do whatever we need to do for our clients including Disaster Recovery. I have to say that our partners on the facilities side did an amazing job of bringing in a number of generators to keep heat in that building the second day on. The water damage on the 1st floor was minimal, but the basements were flooded. In all, between Bellevue and Coler-Goldwater, our restoration team and hospital facilities department pumped 200 million gallons of water from the facility s basements. These buildings are huge you have 3-4 million square feet of building, easily half a million square feet of basement and miles of tunnels. So when you have 8-10 feet of water in that size basement you re talking about a lot of volume! Restoration work at Bellevue Hospital Right now at Bellevue we still have about 3-4 generators. At one time, we had 11 generators operating to get some power in the building, and Coney Island today still has about 4-6 generators running. We re not out of the woods yet, but we re getting to the point where, in the next 45 days, we should be accepting new inpatients. Connections JANUARY

6 Disaster Planning 101: Storm Stories from Hurricane Sandy Marissa Janneire EVS Director Mount Sinai Hospital For us, it wasn t physical damage. It was more about taking in the patients, worrying about the staff that we didn t have onsite because there was no transportation to get into the city, and housing all of Mount Sinai. I think we were putting together sleeping accommodations for over 3,000 people. Our Training Manager, Patrice, was responsible for a spreadsheet that coordinated all of the arrangements. She was taking the calls to find a place for people to sleep, a place for people to shower, and still maintain all the patients. We didn t give up any patients, and we actually took in all of NYU s maternity patients. Four doctors, two nurses, and I went down to Bellevue on Wednesday, and we met with Jeff and Ken. We went to their Command Center because we were receiving patients without notification from FEMA that we were getting them here at Mount Sinai. And there was no way to communicate with Bellevue because they had no power. So we went down there to find out: do you need us to take more patients, do you want to give up anybody, do you want us to send anybody down here to pick up a patient. They actually gave us 5 patients from Bellevue that evening. We didn t get the physical damage, but got hit with evacuated patients and trying to just house people more remain in place for the next 96 to 128 hours. We were here until that Friday, and we re actually still housing people here because many of our employees are from New Jersey, and they had a lot of damage to their homes. 4 5 Mt. Sinai glass bridge: Land of the Lost On that Tuesday night, I sent the PMs to go check an area to see if I could use it for sleeping. The winds were high, and we have 3 glass bridges. Well, they were going across this glass bridge, and the outside glass shattered! So it was like The Land of the Lost for them. All of a sudden, they re crossing the bridge, and the glass is breaking around them, and they re running across the bridge thinking it will disintegrate under them! That was probably the most damage that we had at Mount Sinai. We had the awning fly off the front of the building, but no water damage. We actually started calling people in on Sunday evening. Whoever was here, stayed here. They were working in 12-hour shifts. After the hurricane, Mount Sinai was so proud of their employees they printed T-shirts for everyone to wear saying Mount Sinai Strong. Mt. Sinai Strong team Iris Verdi RRM, EVS King s County Hospital Center, Brooklyn At King s County Hospital, we didn t get hit with massive damage. But we did have all of our people come in Sunday night our entire management team. Everybody stayed until Wednesday or Thursday (10/31 11/1) without going home and checking on their own homes. Then we had the influx of patients from Bellevue and from Coney for which we still have six additional units open right now. Our staff had to open the six extra units, two of which had been closed for a really long time and were in need of lots of TLC. We have a building on the campus that had dorms almost like apartments, so we had to open up all of those rooms and clean them. We made sleeping areas out of places anywhere we could and made up beds and cots; we even found extra cots in one of the buildings. We brought those over and cleaned them, and we set up a staging area there. We had beds in closed units that we opened up for staff. The thing that really stuck out for me was how great my housekeepers were: my housekeepers were working non-stop, and we were turning over beds almost every 8 hours because people were 10

7 sleeping in shifts. But my staff that ended up sleeping here not one of them would sleep in a bed. Every single one of them slept either in our offices or on the floor on what looked like yoga mats. Our staff was constantly turning those beds over, but they knew those beds were going to nurses and doctors. Nobody complained. My managers went out every shift and got hot food for our staff because there wasn t a lot of hot food in the building. And one of my ops managers, who is an HHC supervisor, went out during our overnight shift to get pizza for our staff. But when he went out, it was like the middle of the storm and the wind s blowing, there s tons of water outside, and everything s a huge mess. So, he stepped on a nail, and it went straight through his foot. But he still wouldn t leave for 12 more hours. We had to drag him to the ER to get him a tetanus shot and wrap the foot, and he went right back to work. He said, I can t leave. It was everybody. It wasn t just the Crothall people who were great the teams were great. My staff here at King s is mainly one of a lot of local people. A lot of my staff who did leave came back and most walked to and from work in the storm, which was no easy task. I was really proud. I never had to mandate anyone; people stayed voluntarily. At the end of every shift we formed two groups people who wanted to go home and people willing to stay, and we had enough each time that I never had to mandate a single housekeeper. I think that says a lot. I m a lifelong New Yorker, and I was like oh, this will be just another storm. I certainly didn t expect to see the water damage. I grew up in the neighborhood where King s County is, and as an adult, I ve lived where Coney Island Hospital is. So, when I drove from King s County to Coney Island, I m looking at my communities, I had no sense of the fact that I was in Brooklyn anymore. There were no people. There were live wires down in the middle of the street. It literally was like running an obstacle course to get there. For more of Iris s account, go to the Connections page on MyCompass. It was really a 1-2 punch. First, we couldn t use credit cards all the card readers were down. So we were smart, and before the storm hit, we went to the ATM and pulled out as much cash as we could. But by the second day, everyone was out of cash because they were using it to buy food for the entire staff. Then the ATMs were down. If we managed to get home, we couldn t get back because there was no gas anywhere in the vicinity. I had to drive to New Jersey to find gas! I want to thank Bob Hughes from Horizon House and Andy Reiff from Virginia Mason Medical Center who flew in from the west coast and stayed with us during the crisis. They helped out with getting the Ambulatory Care Center up and running for Bellevue. v HELP WANTED As of today: if there are any managers able to leave their accounts and give the New York team a hand, they would appreciate the help. This team has worked non-stop through the storm, through the holidays, and could use some fresh hands. Anyone who can help should contact Ken Vlass at Connections JANUARY