“If someone falls overboard, the drowning victim should not have to be the one requesting the life preserver to be thrown,” says John Wales. “Ditto for outside help coming to the aid of a battered region.” Wales, ’74, is medical director of the emergency department at East Jefferson General Hospital in Metairie, La. His was one of only three hospitals in greater New Orleans—out of some 25—to function throughout the storm; it served as the local contact and backup for virtually all the region’s rescue and evacuation efforts.
Days after the storm tore through on Monday, August 29, those marooned at the hospital—staff, patients and refuge-seekers—had no idea what was going on elsewhere. All roads were flooded, phones didn’t work, and TV stations shut down, a first in Wales’s memory. When relief teams began arriving Wednesday, and hospital staff managed to get a local TV channel “using an IV pole and some aluminum foil,” the disaster’s enormity grew clearer.
But news trickling in brought another frustration: which rumors to believe? “We heard about rapes of children, and murderers at the Superdome, and that police were issuing a shoot-to-kill order,” Wales says. “We had visions of Mad Max with roaming mobs of assault rifle-carrying murderers and rapists. We heard that the National Guard had ordered 10,000 body bags.” At one point, Wales says, the sleep-deprived and frantic-sounding parish president was proposing New Orleans secede, to speed international aid. Later in the week, a physician who arrived from a flooded hospital tearfully told Wales he’d heard mercy killings had occurred.
When the emergency chief was able to inspect conditions for himself, he was stunned. Arranging evacuation of critically ill patients at the Delta terminal of Louis Armstrong International Airport, he saw something “we had never seen in the practice of civilian medicine—an area set aside for ‘expectant’ patients.” Not pregnant women, but the recently deceased and those expected to die, many from abandoned nursing homes and closed hospitals. “There were no caregivers, no IVs running.” Bodies wrapped in blankets occupied an area normally used for boarding lineups.
At the same time, Wales thought the massive rescue and transportation operation, especially nonstop helicopter relays to and from the “casualty collection point,” was handled well given the extraordinary circumstances.
The darkest hour came Thursday, when diesel fuel for running the hospital generators was almost gone, FEMA announced its pullout from Metairie due to safety concerns, and some fearful staff fled. Fortified with heavily armed National Guard troops—and blessed with its own water well—East Jefferson soldiered on and was the first building reconnected with power on Friday.
Once the Internet functioned, Wales “couldn’t believe how much the world cared.” The experience also bonded hospital staff as never before. “Those who were part of the team during the storm were nicknamed ‘leather,’” Wales says. “Those who came in after the worst was over were ‘Naugahyde’—not quite leather.”
