Lessons learned from Katrina, 9/11, SARS, and other disasters
Dr. Donald Low is the microbiologist-in-chief in the Department of Microbiology at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He's a recognized authority in microbiology, infectious diseases, and has published more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed articles. His knowledge was tested when SARS broke loose in Toronto in 2003. During that outbreak, which has killed 774 people worldwide, he played a vital role in informing the general public about SARS, fighting its spread and working to discover effective treatment and control measures. He was also quarantined in his hospital, and saw his colleagues fall ill and die.
Dr. Isaac Weisfuse is deputy commissioner of health for the Division of Disease Control of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. He has worked there on controlling infectious diseases, including AIDs, STDs and tuberculosis. He was in charge of emergency preparedness for the department since 1999 and served as an agency - (unintelligible) - commander during 9/11.
He was also involved in organizing the city's response to pandemic flu, and was awakened at 3 o'clock in the morning saying, yes, we found anthrax. So he'll tell us about that.
I'd like just to ask them a few questions about their experience so they can tell us, and welcome comments from them, and then we'll have time for questions at the end.
Dr. Ben, would you please tell us a little bit about what to you during Katrina?
DEBOISBLANC: Well, the first thing I want to state is a message that many of you have shared with me but I don't think has really received a lot of press, and that is what a privilege, a real honor it is to be a first responder. This was clearly the most triumphant experience as my life as a civilian.
We were in Charity Hospital, hunkered down for what we have done so many times over the last few decades – that's have our Hurricane Gray drill. We have practiced it and we have actually been confined to the hospital for a day or two at a time for previous hurricanes and tropical storms. I think all of us underestimated what was about to happen.
We first lost power. We had about 340 patients in the hospital, about 50 critically ill, and that's paring down. I think we recognized as a hospital that we were not going to close our doors, that over a hundred thousand people had chosen not to evacuate, could not evacuate, couldn't afford gasoline, had no place to go, and as you've heard this morning, during a natural disaster - during any disaster - that no matter how incapacitated you are as a hospital, people will turn to you as a place of sanctuary. And so we kept our doors open; indeed, we continued to accept patients until the very time of our evacuation.
The hurricane made landfall on Monday, and we lost power in one of our emergency generators right as the hurricane made landfall, but what was unexpected was that with 12 hours we would lose power from our second backup generator. You see, Charity Hospital was built in 1932, and the emergency generators were placed on the first floor.
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