Hundreds of nurses fly into Houston to aid Hurricane Harvey relief efforts

Over the course of four days, more than 300 hundred nurses swooped into Houston to provide much-needed relief to storm-weary nurses during Hurricane Harvey.

We were working with StormGeo, our personal group of meteorologists, who told us in the weeks prior to the storm hitting that we were going to have 48 inches of rain in Houston.

The first thing is to identify the hospitals that we think we're going to have to completely evacuate; that's our No. 1 priority. Simultaneously, we are deploying generators, water tanks, extra linens, additional food, medications—really anything that our hospitals would need so that if they became an island for anywhere from five to seven days, they would be prepared to take care of our patients.

Normally, when you have a hurricane, they come through, you have wind damage and you may have high water, but it is a relatively quick event. With Hurricane Harvey, it just rained and rained. And after the rain and the floods, the reservoirs flooded. It was just such a long disaster; it really tested your resources and your team.

That Saturday night, when we were still taking care of our hospitals and the waters were rising, I was on a call with Jane Englebright, chief nursing officer for the entire company, and I will not forget this, she asked me, “Kelli, how many nurses do you think you are going to need at the end of the storm?”

I wasn't even thinking that far out because I was so busy caring for our patients and what we were dealing with at the time.

Under the support of Jane and her team at the corporate command center, they were able to mobilize nurses. So by that Thursday after the storm, 100 nurses were brought to the greater Houston area. They came to Dallas and were deployed by buses and helicopters to a central location, Conroe Regional Medical Center, which is on the north side of town and had the least amount of flooding. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, they continued to arrive. Over that four-day period, we had over 300 nurses come. They had specialized training, anywhere from the NICU, the OR to the emergency department.

Our nurses were so excited. They would come out to the helicopter to greet the volunteers with gift baskets and would take pictures by the helicopter. The visiting nurses were fresh and revived and excited about being there.

As they arrived, we were allowed to send our nurses home to care for their families and to check on their homes.

We have over 1,700 employees who received assistance from our HCA Hope Fund. A lot of nurses and staff members lost their home or lost their home and their vehicles.

You can imagine, when they came home from work and had to deal with a home that was flooded, they needed some time off. Many of those volunteer nurses stayed with us for two weeks, even four weeks, to allow our nurses to take some needed time off to care for their families and get back on track.