BURGAW — In wake of the decision to shut down Pender Memorial Hospital two days before Hurricane Florence made landfall, New Hanover Regional Medical Center (NHRMC) officials are left with critical questions to examine before facing a similar natural disaster in the future.
According to NHRMC spokesman Julian March, Pender Memorial is rated to withstand a Category 2 hurricane. Although Florence had reached Category 4 winds by Monday, September 10, the National Weather Service (NSW) had downgraded the storm to Category 2 by the end of Wednesday — the same day NHRMC closed Pender Memorial.
When Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach Friday morning, it had been downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 90 mph, according to the NSW.
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At the time, NHRMC spokeswoman Carolyn Fisher said the reason behind the closure was to focus medical resources at the Wilmington facility because it was built to withstand a larger storm.
On September 17, five days after the hospital’s closure, NHRMC and its partner Affiliate Health opened MED-1, “a fully operational mobile hospital,” at a Family Dollar parking lot in Burgaw to provide residents access to medical care until Pender Memorial could safely reopen.
Fisher said the mobile hospital was staffed by a team of “more than 30 [people], made up of emergency room doctors, nurses, and other medical staff … handling anything from minor injuries to severe emergency medical conditions, including trauma surgery and intensive medical care.”
“We were working as quickly as we could to get MED-1 across the state from Charlotte,” Fisher said, adding that hospital staff traveled with evacuated patients to homes and hospital facilities throughout North Carolina, caring for them throughout the storm.
Bill O’Brien, a former surgery technician at NHRMC’s main hospital in Wilmington and now operates a farm outside Burgaw, specifically questioned the closure of Pender Memorial’s emergency department.
“This was a Category 2 storm. We knew this was going to be a category 2 storm for a while,” O’Brien said.
Keeping the emergency room open would have been crucial — and more effective than the mobile hospital — for EMS crews in the area trying to stabilize patients with injuries or cardiac complications before moving them to NHRMC’s Wilmington hospital, especially when U.S. 421, U.S. 118 and I-40 became impassable as the region’s rivers began to flood, according to O’Brien.
If the hospital building was indeed built to handle up to Category 2 winds, especially with a new emergency department facility built well after Hurricane Floyd had impacted the region in 1999, O’Brien asked why Pender Memorial didn’t have a storm staff in place to keep the emergency department running. The NHRMC hospital in Wilmington, he said, had maintained operations throughout the storm on a skeleton crew working 24 hours a day for five days straight.
March confirmed that 1,800 physicians, advanced care providers, and other hospital staff were sheltered at the Wilmington campus for five nights during the storm.
“It seems that could’ve been achieved up in Pender as well,” O’Brien said, although on a smaller scale.
“I just want to know why there was not a storm action plan in place, and if that hospital is not rated for Category 2, which is what I was told, why is that so? When they just finished doing a huge re-model on that place, and put a whole bunch of money in rebuilding the ER and everything else, especially in the years after Hurricane Floyd, why didn’t we plan for a Floyd or worse when remodeling?” O’Brien asked.
Fisher said the decision to close the hospital came when they were facing a Category 4 hurricane offshore, and to reverse such a decision “that late in the game” would be logistically challenging.
“Things change quickly with a hurricane,” Fisher said. “It might’ve been a Category 2 on Wednesday night, who knows what it would’ve been on Thursday morning? And you just can’t take that chance when you’re putting lives on the line … You need to make the best decision you can with the information you have, and we feel we did that.”
When Pender Memorial reopened its doors, hospital staff welcomed returning patients with signs and balloons.
“It’s personal, they are a part of that community,” Fisher said. “The decision to leave was hard for everyone, and they couldn’t wait to get back and start caring for the community again.”
Mark Darrough can be reached at Mark@localvoicemedia.com
