A very special shelter in Covington, La.
Posted: Thursday, September 8 at 03:37 pm CT by Mike Brunker
COVINGTON, La. –- It turns out there is a solution to the problem I wrote about on Monday: overstressed hospitals and other medical caregivers “dumping” patients on Red Cross shelters unable to provide the treatment they require.
By sheer chance on Thursday, we drive out to the Covington High School after being told by a National Guardsman that there is a shelter there. At the door we are met by John Tobin, who takes us on a tour of a “special needs” center that should be a national model for taking care of those who require special care during disasters.
Special needs evacuees sleep in the gymnasium inside the shelter in Covington, La. (Andrew Locke / MSNBC.com)
The operation, which sprawls throughout various wings of the school, provides food, care and shelter for more than 300 patients with serious medical conditions or other problems that require attention and treatment, but not necessarily hospitalization. Believed to be the biggest shelter of its kind, it is overseen by St. Tammany Parish, La., but is the brainchild of Tobin, a social services coordinator for the parish, and three key assistants.
The key to the center’s success is planning, says Tobin, taking advantage of a rare quiet moment to smoke a cigar and sip a Coke.
“Four years ago we began planning our response for up to a Category 4 hurricane,” he says. “Today, we are sitting in the eye of the storm and making it happen.”
Tobin and his team – Angelique Mulina, who oversees the medical operations, Celeste Broussard, manager of the clerical operation, and Robert Noquin, the go-to guy for operations – run a tight ship. One of its strengths is a radio communications system that enables Tobin to instantly contact hospitals, police and even animal control to prevent any surprises.
“Chaos is not acceptable,” Tobin says. “People get hurt in chaotic situations.”
New admissions and other walk-ins with medical problems are first seen by a FEMA disaster medical assistance team, dispatched by the federal agency from Toledo, Ohio, early last week. This 35-member team of doctors, nurses, EMTs and other medical personnel provides medical care and recommends admission to the shelter for those with chronic problems requiring continued attention and “electrically dependent” patients who need specialized medical equipment to stay alive.
The center also accepts patients from hospitals if they aren’t critically ill and those from other parishes without such a state-of-the-art shelter.
Among the patients still living in the air-conditioned shelter are the elderly and infirm, including the residents of two nursing homes evacuated to the shelter before the storm; people with breathing problems; schizophrenics and other psychiatric patients; amputees; people with spinal cord injuries; and post-surgery patients discharged from hospitals but not yet ready to go home.
In addition to food and shelter, the center provides specialized medical equipment for those who had to leave home without theirs. It also has a hospice for terminally ill patients in the final stages of their illnesses in the library, where family members can gather and have a quiet moment with the dying person.
And unlike other shelters we visited, the special needs center allows evacuees to bring their pets, though they are kept in a separate wing of the school.
“A lot of them don’t have much family, but they have animals and they are not leaving (their homes) without those animals,” says Tobin.
The shelter is designed to be self-contained for between three and five days after a hurricane or other major disaster and resembles nothing so much as a small city when it’s going full steam.
Eleven days after Katrina hit the area, the shelter is just over half of the maximum population of 601 it hit in the first days after the storm, but Tobin says he can’t even begin to think about shutting down until the federal government arranges for temporary housing for those outcasts capable of living on their own.
“I’m dependent on FEMA,” he says, noting that the agency has been in discussions with St. Tammany’s Parish officials on the timing of that development. “I’m not sure how much progress has been made.”
Shelter workers triage and wash an elderly patient as he is admitted to the special-needs shelter in Covington. (Andrew Locke / MSNBC.com)
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