Content about Natural Disaster

JOPLIN, Mo. — The Sisters of Mercy have made a commitment to spend as much as $543 million on a new state-of-the-art hospital—slated to open in 2014—to replace St. John’s Regional Medical Center, which was destroyed by an EF-5 tornado.

The May 22 tornado, which packed winds of up to 198 miles per hour, killed five patients and one visitor at the 367-bed hospital. The victims were among a total of 154 people killed by the severe weather in this southwestern Missouri city of 50,000 people.

The late-afternoon tornado made a direct hit on St. John’s and then appeared to stall over the hospital for a minute or more, according to emergency management personnel. It tore off portions of the hospital’s roof and peeled off entire sections of its façade.

Walls in the modern nine-story building were knocked 10 feet out of place; windows were blown out and rooms and corridors strewn with broken glass, fragments of concrete, and ceiling tiles. Virtually every patient and visitor suffered cuts from flying broken glass. Medical records and X-rays were sucked up by the tornado and dumped two counties away.

On the morning after the storm, the hospital—one of Joplin’s tallest buildings—appeared bombed out.

“The hospital was completely devastated,” says Jeff Hamilton, emergency management coordinator for the Sisters of Mercy Health System, which operates 28 hospitals and more than 200 outpatient facilities in the Midwest. “The tornado twisted the building 4^1/2 inches off its foundation. I’ve never seen anything remotely like it in my life.”

Employees in linen services escaped injury and death, according to Marilyn Endicott, director of materials management, which includes linen services. Linen services distributes clean linen provided by Healthcare Linen Specialists, a commercial service in Joplin.

“It’s miraculous that no one in linen services was killed or injured,” says Endicott, who credits the health system’s emergency evacuation plan, dubbed Condition Gray, with saving lives and sparing injury to the employees.

Remarkably, the only major loss involved damage to linen inventory, according to Endicott.

By the morning after the tornado struck, the hospital, which is a major trauma care center in the area, had moved all its patients to other facilities, says Cora Scott, a spokeswoman for the hospital.

Hospital staff worked all night caring for patients. The most critical patients were taken to Freeman Health System hospital, about two miles east. Patients who were able to walk were taken to Memorial Hall, a community building in Joplin, where a makeshift clinic was set up. Still others were taken to a Catholic high school, at least temporarily.

St. John’s Regional Medical Center set up as a Mobile Surgical Hospital near the ruins of the hospital and received linen twice daily from Healthcare Linen Specialists. Under a talent-sharing program, employees of linen services did not lose their jobs; they were dispersed to work at other hospitals in the area, as needed.

Tomorrow: The twister cut a swath of damage nearly a mile wide and four miles long…

ROANOKE, Va. — Much has been said about having backup plans in case of disasters. The recent storms in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia have brought fresh attention to the subject. Here are some valuable lessons learned during these violent spring storms.

Does your laundry have a weather radio to warn you of approaching storms? Having time to prepare is essential in avoiding injuries. These particular storms moved extremely fast and often happened without a lot of warning. The situation quickly moved from a weather advisory to a weather warning to the actual storm.

Do your employees know where to go in case of a violent storm? Establish severe-weather shelters within your place of business and train all employees about what to do in case of a weather emergency. Quick thinking on the part of a home-improvement store manager saved the lives of his customers and his employees. We all want to believe it will never happen to us, but being prepared will help us get through the storm if it does happen.

Northern Alabama was without power from a Wednesday afternoon until Sunday night, and the area affected by this power outage was extremely large. Debris blocked major roads. Having no power, gas stations were closed. As a result of the storms, the need for linen in hospitals and hotels increased dramatically. Is your organization prepared to function under these circumstances?

Does your laundry have a backup generator? Is it large enough to allow you to run your entire laundry? When a large region like northern Alabama, with many key defense industries, is without power, it would be difficult to obtain a portable generator to run your laundry. Further complicating the problem would be the number of roads rendered impassable due to debris.

Another problem caused by the lack of power was the loss of many land-based and cellular phones. A number of cellular towers were destroyed. If you are unable to contact your employees by phone, how will they know when to return to work?

Having the assurance of a backup generator as part of your facility and established plans to operate your facility immediately after a disaster will aid your employees in understanding their role and responsibilities.

The lack of fuel for trucks and employees’ cars is an unexpected problem. I must admit that I had not taken this into consideration as part of my disaster-preparedness plan. Certainly, having a leasing company with its own pumps and backup generator would be one way to prepare for this occurrence. Knowing ahead of time which fuel sources would be available in case of a power outage would also be helpful.

Parts of northern Alabama had a dusk-till-dawn curfew, which limited the hours a laundry or business could operate. This would cause havoc to a plan that requires a laundry to extend its operational hours due to an undersized generator.

Trucks that were clearly identified as essential service vehicles made the delivery of linen easier, as many roads were closed except for emergency or essential service vehicles.

I am confident that there are additional lessons to be learned from the violent storms that struck in April but I could only touch on some of the key issues. I certainly hope that we will not need to put too many of these lessons to the test in the near future.

“What planning and training must a laundry manager or textile rental operator coordinate to prepare his/her employees to react safely and swiftly during a crisis in the facility, such as a fire or other life-threatening event?”

Hotel/Motel/Resort Laundry: Phil Jones, Sheraton Vistana Resort, Orlando, Fla.

WASHINGTON — Natural-gas working inventories (underground storage quantity) at the end of October are about the same as last year’s record-setting level, resulting in a decline in prices for the last two months, according to the latest U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) short-term energy outlook.

Mild weather, high production and the absence of significant hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico also contributed to the large inventory build.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Gaylord Opryland Resort is taking guest reservations for a Nov. 15 reopening, just six months after massive springtime flooding from the adjacent Cumberland River left the hotel, the legendary Grand Ole Opry and the company’s other area facilities severely damaged.

As of mid-September, clean-up and remediation work had been completed and construction was under way, according to Pete Weien, senior vice president and general manager, who posted an update on the resort’s website.

HOUSTON — In an effort to further reduce its carbon footprint, Hilton Americas-Houston, the city’s largest hotel and first Green Seal-certified hotel in Texas, is now even greener following the installation of an AquaRecycle water-recycling system in its on-premise laundry.

This year’s contributors introduce themselves, describe their operations, identify challenges and list their accomplishments for 2009.

Textiles: Elizabeth Easter, Ph.D., University of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky.

DES PLAINES, Ill. — Hurricane. Tornado. Fire. Flash flood.

Should your laundry encounter any of these emergency scenarios, your first instinct may be to get things back up and running as soon as possible. But the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) warns that reopening hastily can expose you and your workers to potential dangers.

NEW ORLEANS — I have visited New Orleans on several occasions, but this is the first time that I’ve seen Christmas decorations, or for that matter, Santa Claus marching in a jazz funeral. This is also the first time that I encountered weather here that wasn’t as warm as the Cajun cuisine.

KENNER, La. — Hurricane Gustav may have prompted evacuations along the Gulf Coast and tested New Orleans’ newly rebuilt levees, but Pellerin Milnor Corp., headquartered in Kenner, has weathered the storm with only minimal interruptions, company spokespeople say. Kenner is located on the west side of New Orleans’ metropolitan area in Jefferson Parish.

In the second of a series, this year’s contributors to the American Laundry News Panel of Experts introduce themselves, describe their operations, identify challenges and list their accomplishments for 2007.