CRISIS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Water poured into hospitals. Ambulances were caught up in roiling floodwaters. Medical transport helicopters were grounded by high winds. Houston’s world-renowned health care infrastructure found itself battered by Hurricane Harvey, struggling to treat storm victims while becoming a victim itself.
The coming days will inevitably bring more hazards for storm-damaged hospitals and nursing homes, and their patients and staff. The scenes of turmoil across Texas raised the specter of the extreme flooding following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when dozens of hospital and nursing home patients died, and doctors awaiting rescue at one stranded, powerless hospital became so desperate, they intentionally hastened the deaths of their patients.
The response to Harvey, now a tropical storm but still wreaking havoc over the state, promises answers to whether health officials learned lessons from the catastrophe of Katrina when it comes to the medically vulnerable — in particular whether they did enough to prepare for the disaster and to move patients out of its path…
Responders point to dozens of improvements, from better engineered structures to well-practiced cooperation, that are helping protect lives. Still, sometimes even the soundest plans have been foiled.”
-Sheri Fink and Alan Blinder, “Houston’s Hospitals Treat Storm Victims and Become Victims Themselves,” The New York Times online, Aug. 28, 2017