[StBernard] Nurse shares her experiences coping with Hurricane Katrina

[Westley Annis]

Article published Sep 4, 2006
Nurse shares her experiences coping with Hurricane Katrina
A CHAT WITH Michelle Pearson, an intensive care unit nurse from Louisiana
who migrated to Tennessee in the wake of Hurricane Katrina

The winds of last year's Hurricane Katrina brought Michelle Pearson to West
Tennessee and eventually to Jackson's Russell Road.

She sat Sunday afternoon with her mother, Sandra Menard, and her fraternal
twin sister, Angelle Jacobs, recalling the days leading up to and following
the storm. Her family was visiting her from Louisiana for Labor Day.

Pearson, 26, an intensive care unit nurse, lived in Chalmette, La., and
worked five minutes away at Methodist Hospital in east New Orleans. The
first floor of the hospital, with its cafeteria and pharmacy, flooded the
Monday the hurricane hit.

Pearson was trapped in the six-floor medical facility with patients, staff
and others who swam in for five days until the hospital was evacuated the
following Friday.

Her husband, Robert Pearson, has family in Brownsville, where she is
presently Progressive Care Unit Director at Haywood Park Community Hospital.

Question: What do you recall in the days leading up to the hurricane? A few
days before, as far as you were concerned and the hospital?

Answer: As far as I was concerned, we knew a hurricane was coming and we
knew we had to get out. My mom always told me when a hurricane comes, you
get out because you never know what's going to happen. (Her husband left the
Saturday before; her mom left early Sunday.)

We packed up what we could in the house, like important papers ... photos,
whatever you can think of ... the animals. So, he (her husband) left, and I
was there by myself because I had to go into work Sunday morning. ... I was
scheduled, so I had to go in. ...

Then, also, with all the other hurricanes ... I was always one of the nurses
who went and evacuated with my patients. I knew it was my job and
responsibility. I had to be there.

I knew everybody I loved was away. They were safe. My animals were safe. I
don't have children.

Q: What was it like at the hospital that Sunday?

A: I was scared. I was crying the whole way there. (She knew her house would
flood and the new Toyota Highlander she was driving would be totaled.) The
thing is, I thought we (the hospital) would evacuate like we always (did).
... They made it mandatory that all hospitals stay open. ...

They say ... that FEMA and everybody confiscated the ambulances and
everything because of martial law. ... I still don't know, and I don't think
we'll ever know why we didn't evacuate because we'd evacuated so many times
before by helicopter to another place.

None of the hospitals evacuated, and you've got to remember we've got
critical patients. So, that really was upsetting.

(Sunday at the hospital they prepared as much as possible for the hurricane,
filling garbage cans and other containers with water, gathering flashlights,
moving patients away from windows, etc.)

We didn't prepare enough. I will say that. We should have prepared a little
bit better, but you don't know what's going to happen. We didn't know we
were going to be there for five days. We thought we'd be out by Monday
afternoon after the storm. ...

Q: What was the mood among the patients?

A: (The ICU's patients were on breathing machines or brain dead. Some were
scared.) They trusted us. They knew we would take care of them. So, we just
talked about it, and took it step by step.

Then, Sunday night, I tried to go to sleep in one of the patients' rooms.
Our ICU is made of all glass. ... It's a round dome circle, nothing but
glass, about 34 beds. The storm was starting to really kick up, around 8
p.m. or 8:30 p.m. ... The winds and all started, and through the night, it
got worse and worse and worse. The rain, the winds. You hear pound, pound,
pound on the windows, and you know, it's glass windows.

So, I was scared. I'm sleeping by a glass window, of course. I was scared it
was going to bust. So, I tossed and turned all night. ...

Q: What happened Monday?

A: I woke up really early (about 7 a.m.) and got out of bed really early
because by then, the hurricane was coming, now. That's when it really got
hectic. (Her family was calling her on her cell phone to check on her as
they realized the hurricane was upon her. Her mom recalled hearing glass
breaking in the background and the horror in Michelle's voice.)

We were jumping on our patients with pillows to cover their heads from the
broken glass. ... You could hear the windows boom, boom, boom. It was
constantly like a train going by ... If you looked out the window, you just
saw white, like a white sheet, because the rain's not coming down, it's
going this way. (Michelle indicates sideways.)

You see things flying, tires, you name it. You just see a sheet of white,
and it's just flying 100 mph past you. ... We were getting our patients,
transferring them to different rooms, and covering them with pillows.

Half the hospital's roof caved in. ... We lost power by 8 a.m. Monday.

(The storm died down about 1 p.m. Monday afternoon.)

It was like the calm after the storm. The sun came out in the afternoon. You
just looked, and now, you're standing in the middle of a huge lake. Water
everywhere. Cars, covered, floating. Alarms were going off everywhere. By
this time, our first floor was covered in water.

(Displaced evacuees started trickling in during and after the storm.)

Some with head gashes. They were coming through in the ICU (on the second
floor). ... They were swimming in (through a stairwell). We'd catch them and
tend to their cuts.

A lot of them had a lot of head injuries, arm injuries, cuts. ... You really
can't assign them a room. There's no room left. ... We started putting
everybody in halls. They just sat in the halls. ... We wound up taking in a
lot of people.

(No one at the hospital was killed in the storm. The generator worked
temporarily. They had to hand-pump air to patients who were on oxygen. Their
chief executive officer and New Orleans police helped with that task.)

We did lose some patients. We did have to do some emergency surgeries. We
did what we could with what we had.

(People at the hospital went on to ration what food and water they had for
the next four days. Patients got evacuated Thursday through Friday morning.
The staff got evacuated Friday afternoon.)

Q: How has this one-year anniversary of Katrina been for you?

A: The funny thing is, truthfully, I've been a wreck this past couple of
weeks. I don't know if it's buying a new house (she's preparing to move), or
the hurricane thing or I'm working nights and days. ... Saturday night, I
got to sleep. I didn't sleep again until Tuesday night. ... I said, "Isn't
this weird that this is happening around the same time the hurricane
happened?"

I watched the documentaries, but it just made me madder, just mad because
people didn't have to die. And they did.

Visit jacksonsun.com and share your thoughts.

- Tonya Smith-King, 425-9680