ORLANDO, Fla. – With Hurricane Milton bearing down on Central Florida, we had a chance to catch up with the folks at Orlando Health for some storm related questions.
Can visitors still come to see patients? Can hospitals be used as shelters? What happens to your helicopters during a storm?
Recommended Videos
Here’s a Q&A of reporter Donovan Myrie’s conversation with Eric Alberts, Assistant Vice President of Emergency Management at Orlando Health. The transcript has been edited for brevity.
[RELATED: Track Milton: Cone, models, more | COUNTY-BY-COUNTY: Central Fla. impacts | TIMELINE: Milton in Central Florida | Here’s where Milton ranks among strongest Atlantic hurricanes Milton’s ‘dirty side’ is different | What do evacuation zones mean? | Download the FREE News 6 hurricane app]
Myrie: This storm pretty much started off with Central Florida in the bull’s eye. How do you plan for this? How do you accommodate this? How do you deal with still “doing” and staying in business during an emergency?
Alberts: That’s a really good question. Our patients are our community, and we cannot go out of business or close or not provide any service to them. We have done a lot of research to put together emergency management plans. We have really good policies and procedures that address individual threats. We have a hurricane management plan; we have a severe weather plan. We have lockdown plans. We control, communicate, and collaborate with others. Leading up to today, we’ve actually done a ton to prepare the organization, and we started with those efforts this past weekend including a lot of different things like getting fuel for our generators, making sure there’s enough linen for our patients. What about pharmaceuticals? What about blood supplies? Vaccines? You know, moving them to safe locations, having backup water on hand, having enough food at our facilities for several days. So we’ve been doing a ton of work at our facilities just to get ready for Hurricane Milton.
Myrie: If you have a relative or someone that you know who is in the hospital, can you still visit them during the storm? And can you stay?
Alberts: Two different questions there. The first one is, yes, we do allow some visitation to our facilities. There was a media release that was sent out by our media relations team and I’d recommend trying to see the updates that are on our website. We do not recommend people coming at this point, because we don’t want you to get hurt and become another patient inside of our facility.
I want to remind everyone we’re not shelters. There are shelters across the counties in our area that people should go to if they need support like that; we’re here for urgent needs like life support, life-saving needs, cuts, illnesses, those (injuries) that are really important and in dire need right now. So if you need us, we’re here for you. But otherwise, if you need shelter, whatever, that’s not us, that’s a public shelter that’s identified by the county.
Myrie: Surgeries and procedures. How do you handle that? How do you reschedule that?
Alberts: We have a whole team that does these rescheduling efforts, and they’re looking at all the calendars, they’re looking at schedules, they’re seeing where they can fit people in. They’ll even look to see if they can extend hours in certain cases. It’s kind of almost like an air traffic control center for patient surgeries, if you will.
Myrie: More than once you’ve said team – there are a bunch of people that we will probably never meet, never know their names, never know who are organizing all this. I’m not saying so much that they live for this, but this is their shining moment, isn’t it?
Alberts: Yeah, and as a matter of fact, we call it our Orlando Health Emergency Response Team and they’re kind of, in essence, volunteers. You know, they are getting compensated for their time, but they volunteer to come in for this hurricane and help continue to care for our community, and that includes everything (such as) clinical areas like nursing, ancillary support for those who support direct patient care, and administrative functions. And we have enough to sustain ourselves with staffing the whole way through this hurricane and immediately after. They’re highly motivated to be here, and because they care about our community, they want to be here to help.
Myrie: What are you doing with your helicopters? They’re not just sitting around waiting for this are they? Did you basically send them somewhere?
Alberts: Yeah, they’re away - we call it “hangered up.” They’re in safe shelters that are built to withstand these kinds of winds and conditions. When the coast is clear, as they say, we’ll assess the situation outside, we’ll talk to the FAA towers, and if it’s safe to go back out, then the aircraft can go back out and help with the rescue and response operations like we always do.
Myrie: We’ve had to have a lot of evacuations. You don’t evacuate your hospitals; you don’t basically shut them down?
Alberts: No, we do not. We’re watching where there’s evacuation zones of some of the facilities. We did have one freestanding emergency department that was in an evacuation zone in the St Petersburg area and we did close that site. We’re ahead of Milton, but all of our other sites are not in an evacuation zone.
Myrie: Anything else that we need to know?
Alberts: Honestly at this point, please be careful with what you’re doing. If you don’t need to be outside, please don’t be outside. If there’s a tornado warning, you want to be in the interior of your house or your structure, like a restroom or a bathroom with no outside windows, no outside doors. Outside of that, after the hurricane, follow the advice from the authorities and media. Don’t go outside unless it’s safe. When it is safe, please be aware of your surroundings. Please think about what you’re doing before you do it, because we don’t want you to become one of those numbers, or one of those patients that we end up seeing that has fallen off a ladder, has had a chainsaw accident, has had a deep cut or a trauma injury, carbon monoxide poisoning, or asphyxiation from flood waters like drowning cases. You know, these are the things we see after hurricanes, we don’t want to see that. So please be careful with what you’re doing and that includes after the hurricane. We know everyone wants to go out and assess the damage, but your life may be at risk, and we don’t want you to get hurt or sick.
Myrie: It’s almost as if we’re here for you but we don’t want to see you.
Alberts: Yeah, and it’s not to be rude. We’re always here for you, but we’d rather not have an emergency. If you can plan ahead or think ahead, please don’t get yourself in a compromising situation.
Myrie: Eric, absolutely great advice. You guys, be safe and thank you so much for taking the time and talking with us.
Alberts: Thank you so much. Be safe and be well.