What Hurricane Ida Means for Louisiana ’s COVID-19 Problem

On Thursday, as Hurricane Ida loomed as a Category 4 storm that threatened massive flooding, high winds and power outages along Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, health administrators at Marrero Healthcare Center, located just northeast of where Ida made landfall, decided to evacuate upwards of 80 residents to safer ground. Two days of hurried packing later, the residents, most of whom are ambulatory, piled onto two school buses from LaFourche Parish for the expected four hour and 40 minute ride inland. Another bus transported medical supplies and equipment as well as food for the trip. Twenty one of the bed-bound residents were wheeled into a large emergency vehicle in bunks stacked three high on each side of the truck. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “It’s so hard on the elderly folks, many of them, just to travel for an hour or two in a car. But to travel on a stretcher for six hours? That’s a strong generation. Very little complaints, and they did well,” says Elizabeth Dowden, nursing home director for Many Healthcare, the residents’ new temporary home. The journey ultimately took up to seven hours for part of the caravan as thousands fleeing the southeastern coast standing directly in Ida’s path packed the highways leading inland. Once the residents arrived in the town of Many, police officers and sheriff’s deputies met the buses and over the next three hours, helped the passengers to disembark and unload their belonging...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news