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.