(Story updated at 9:45 a.m. ET Nov. 26.)
Hospitals in the St. Louis area braced for another violent night Tuesday after at least 25 people were injured in riots triggered by a grand jury's decision not to indict Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.
Officials at hospitals in the St. Louis metropolitan area—where Ferguson is located—said they had prepared for the possibility of violent protests for several weeks when it became clear that the grand jury was close to a decision. Many set up incident commands Monday evening to oversee operations, relay information to employees and handle media requests.
Barnes-Jewish Hospital, a part of St. Louis-based not-for-profit BJC Healthcare, tweeted that it had received nine patients who had been injured in the riots as of Tuesday afternoon. Three of them were admitted. Around 7 a.m. on Wednesday, Barnes-Jewish tweeted that it had treated seven patients in the previous 24 hours, four of whom were admitted, making for a total of 14 since Nov. 23. Christian Hospital, also a part of BJC, reported that it had received six patients in its ER who were injured in the violence between 10 p.m. Monday and 4 a.m. Tuesday, and did not release an injury report as of early Wednesday morning.
A spokesman for SSM Health Care, a Catholic not-for-profit system based in St. Louis, said its hospitals treated 10 patients Monday evening and Tuesday morning: five at DePaul Health Center, two at Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center and three at St. Mary's Health Center.
At Cardinal Glennon, two older children were treated for injuries related to tear gas that was deployed by police Monday evening and Tuesday morning, but a spokeswoman reported no related patients during the most recent night shift. Damon Harbison, the hospital's COO and incident commander, said preparation for riots in Ferguson had been “on our radar for months.”
Harbison, who worked the night shift Monday and Tuesday evening along with other staff members to monitor the evening's events, said Tuesday that SSM had developed multidisciplinary committees at both the network and hospital levels to run through scenarios and prepare staff for the riots.
Though the staff in the hospital's ER understand how to deal with intake surges, the key role Harbison had Monday night was to reassure employees, patients and families that the hospital was safe and that operating as usual. Human resources staff and chaplains were on hand to assist in this mission.
“Patients' rooms have TVs, but we don't want them to worry about what's going on outside. We want them to know we have this safety net over them,” Harbison said. “It touches lives in a different way. We've got staff that live in the areas that were hot zones.”
The children's hospital isn't far from the Shaw neighborhood, where what started as a peaceful protest turned violent.
“All the planning that we did paid off. We had the right communication tools, the right team members in our incident command center and we were organized,” Harbison said.
Follow Adam Rubenfire on Twitter: @arubenfire
