The largest hospitals in Panama City, Fla., are shutting down and evacuating patients due to heavy damage from Hurricane Michael.
Officials at Bay Medical Sacred Heart announced that they're transferring about 200 patients to hospitals in Pensacola and Jacksonville, and to Mobile, Ala.
Gulf Coast Regional Medical Center says it has suspended all services and is evacuating patients as well.
Sacred Heart's statement says the transfers began at 3 a.m. Thursday with 39 critical care patients and would take about 48 hours to complete.
Damage at Sacred Heart includes blown-out windows, a cracked exterior wall and a roof collapse in a maintenance building that stores supplies necessary for long-term care. The hospital says no patients were injured and its emergency room remains open on generator power.
Boston-based Karen Clark & Company, an insurance company that produces models for catastrophes is estimating Hurricane Michael caused about $8 billion in insured losses.
It includes the privately insured wind and storm surge damage to residential, commercial and industrial properties and automobiles. The figure does not include losses covered by the National Flood Insurance Program.
Michael made landfall as a 155 mph (250 kph), Category 4 storm Wednesday afternoon in Mexico Beach, Florida. The hurricane left a path of destruction through the Florida Panhandle and entered Georgia as a Category 3 storm.
KCC estimates that nearly half of insured loss from Michael occurred in Florida's Bay and Gulf counties. Total damages from storm surge are estimated to be $3.7 billion, of which about ten percent will be insured.
State officials say Michael left Florida's largest psychiatric hospital "entirely cut off."
A spokesman with the Florida Department of Children and Families says Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee has been running on emergency generators. A helicopter dropped water and food at the facility on Thursday after a tree downed during the storm caused a water line to break.
Landlines and cellphones are also down at the hospital, which has nearly 1,000 residents and more than 300 staff. Staff are using emergency radios to stay in contact with first responders.
Many roads in and around the facility are blocked, but 50 staff from two other state mental health facilities are being brought in to assist.
Patients at the facility have been committed involuntarily either through civil or criminal cases.
