HJBR Nov/Dec 2021

DIALOGUE Normally we evacuate our hospitals and the most vulnerable people. That didn’t happen, because they were full and there was no place to go. Normally we evacuate to Baton Rouge. The Baton Rouge hospital was full. Birmingham hospital was full. Shreveport, full. Tennessee, full. We had hospitals that would start clear- ing out days before; it didn’t happen. We had people overexposed. Normally, a hospital would keep a small staff with the most frag- ile patient like a new baby that you can’t move or somebody that just came in with a heart attack, so you have a small footprint in the hospi- tal with a generator. Hospitals are full. Guess what? The one generator — we learned that the generator is a backup to the grid. What we learned in Ida is we got to have a backup to the backup, because we had genera- tors fail with the hospital full of peo- ple. And there’s literally nowhere to send them. Editor Why did the generators fail? What failed on them? Honoré Like cars, shit breaks. I mean to use that word. Stuff happens. And when you’ve got a hospital full of peo- ple ... The next dilemma we saw was gasoline. It was most prevalent in the essential workers. The essential work- ers can’t get gas, they can’t move the garbage trucks. The essential workers at the hospital who would work a 12-hour shift, who was living in a house with no electric- ity, had trouble getting gas. They would get off shift after 12 hours and spend four hours trying to find gas every few days. We made a proposal after hurricane Gus- tav in the Louisiana legislature that every gas station in Louisiana would be equipped with a generator. The response from the elite legislature was, “we’re going to cause the little man to go spend money.” That was the response. You had the same legislature stand on, “where is FEMAwith the genera- tor?”Well, go get your own damn generator, and make it a requirement at every drug- store and every gas station. People need gas so they can leave. You withme? People need medicine. If they lose their medicine ... and drug stores are a center in urban areas for everything, from water to food. For many people, they live out of drugstores. We’ve not gotten there. The question is, by next hurricane season, will we have a generator law?And look, any gas station that had a generator, guess what? They not only sold gas, they sold everything in the store. The merchant will make their money back. We’ve got to adapt. Katrina was a high watermark. We built a levy; we got resil- ience. How do we get resilience in our grid and in our hospitals? Because, we always depended on what? Evacuation. And that, many times, would start days before. Editor How would you rate our hospitals’ preparedness? Honoré A. But they, in context, got overrun. Normally, we don’t plan a hurricane season and a pandemic simultaneously. It was all outside their control. You see, in a disaster, you’re not in control. In a disaster, you going to need help. If you are in control and you don’t need help, it’s not a disaster. We got to put that in context. If you are in control and you don’t need help, it’s not a disaster — it’s an inconvenience. We’ve gone a long way with FEMAand the federal government leaning forward to get things positioned; but it’s not going to be perfect in execution, because the storm has a vote. Editor How would you say that we did with chemical releases from that cor- ridor that we spoke of earlier? Honoré Cancer Alley. The White House called it the “Chemical Corri- dor.” That’s a hell of a ... But, a lot of our people work there. It’s just the way Mother Nature gave us natural resources, and that’s the jobs we’ve got. We didn’t get a GM plant. We didn’t get a Toyota plant. We didn’t get a Mercedes plant. We got the Saints and petrochemical. Meaning, tourism and petrochemical drive our economy. The storm hit the most rev- enue-intensive sector of the state — the heart of petrochemical — starting with the offshore oil rigs. Six refineries were closed as a result. Much of that gas in those refineries goes to Geor- gia and used on airplanes, so we are a significant part of the U.S. National Secu- rity. We understand gas now as an essential commodity. As much as we want to get rid of gas and the effects of fossil fuel, gas is an essential commodity. It’s not just food and water. It’s food, water, gas and electricity. FEMA, just don’t send food and water, make sure the gas trucks are ready, and make sure if you do an evacuation, you refill the gas stations after the evacuations. Gas is not just an impact at the eye of the storm. Gas impacts Baton Rouge, because people leaving, what did they do? Fill up at Baton Rouge. People coming back wanted to fill up at Baton Rouge. It’s an area problem, not just COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS D “Now, when I say that I give it a D and not an F, because of the culture — neighbors taking care of neighbors, the level of preparedness — we can’t say that because the communications went down, somebody lost their life. There’s no direct correlation, but there’s certainly a hell of a lot of people that went through a lot of pain and suffering, not being able to communicate.” 22 NOV / DEC 2021 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE