In 2001, a tornado peeled the roof off a hospital in Hoisington, Kansas, just after patients were evacuated. Tornadoes have smashed into hospitals before Joplin. Everyone was just shouting, ‘I need this! I need that!'” said Perkins. Then I made my way into the hospital but no one knew where to go or what to do. “I didn’t even make it into the hospital before I treated an injured man lying in the bed of a pickup truck. A two-way exchange commenced: bloodied people poured into the hospital as essential medical supplies poured out to the surrounding rubble. When she finally reached the hospital, triage was the task of nurses and patients alike. John’s Regional Medical Center, Perkins continued running toward Freeman until a pick-up truck offered to take her the rest of the way. It was completely surreal no words can describe the devastation,” Perkins said.Īfter pausing to view the damaged hulk of St. John’s Hospital – it looked like the set of a movie. I got out of my car and started running toward Freeman. “I started making my way into town but I could not drive any further than 20th Street. She was among the bounty of nurses that promptly reported to the hospital for duty. “When the storm hit, I was at home huddled in the crawlspace with my children,” said Amanda Perkins, RN, also a nurse at Freeman Health Systems.įueled by adrenaline and instinct, Perkins instantly got in her car and made her way to the hospital. John’s Regional Medical Center was all but destroyed. Freeman Health Systems sustained only minor building damage. Hearts were not the only thing broken many buildings were also damaged in the storm. An exact number of casualties remains elusive for instance, one woman died of a heart attack May 23 immediately after learning her father had died in the tornado. The death toll is reported to be 124 and rising. The tornado that galloped through Joplin was officially the deadliest single U.S. Listen as a nurse shares her experience from another kind of unexpected emergency.There were no beds ready nobody knew which way to turn,” Bishop said. We had to pry the doors opened because the power had gone out. Within minutes, two pick-up trucks full of injured people pulled up to the emergency room doors. “I had little preparation for the nightmare I experienced after the tornado hit I had not ever worked in a disaster situation before that night. Blown off doors were turned into makeshift gurneys. X-rays plucked from filing cabinets in Joplin rained down sixty miles away in Greene County. As the inky black sky dissipated, nurses became impromptu first responders. Then panic hit,” said Katlynn Bishop, RN, of Freeman Health Systems in Joplin. “The entry doors to the emergency room started pounding and there was this roar louder than anything I had ever heard before. On the evening of May 22, trouble came to the hospitals in Joplin, MO, in a strikingly different way: a mile-wide category F-5 tornado. On most evenings, trouble arrives through the emergency room doors.
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