Nurse, patients forced to flee

Life has changed for 28-year-old Megan Combs who, as a pediatric nurse for Tulane University Hospital, awoke at 5 a.m. Tuesday to the sight of rising water and an immediate notice that all the patients had to go.
Combs, who lives in Covington, was at Lafayette Regional Airport on Tuesday evening after being airlifted with two of her infant patients and another nurse from the hospital.
The hospital had operated through the storm by moving patients to higher floors and consolidating units, but Tuesday one of the main generators was in danger of going out. That would mean imminent death for some patients.
There were four daytime and four nighttime nurses in her unit to oversee five children. All of the children had been evacuated Tuesday.
Patients were evacuated first, then the hospital employees who could fit on the helicopters.
"Basically, it was if you could convince them to take you, you got out. If not, you stayed," she said. "There are several of our people still there. No water. No air conditioning."
Combs said the mood was controlled chaos.
"Some people were panicking," but most, she said, were very calm and knew what they had to do.
"Everyone just wanted to get out of there. No one wanted to stay," she said.
After the storm, she, along with many of her co-workers, had walked out of the front of the hospital to survey the damage. They talked about getting into their cars Monday night and going to their homes only to wake up Tuesday to find that "water was about 5 to 6 feet deep and circled the hospital."
As the helicopters lifted up to head for Alexandria, below her she could see the extent of the damage, "a lot of water, a lot of people. A lot of people on the streets are standing on overpasses that weren't flooding - just nowhere to go, wading through the water."
In her 28 years, all of which have been spent in the New Orleans area, she said she had never seen anything like it.
As for her family, she planned to meet a cousin in Baton Rouge. She was waiting for a helicopter to take her Tuesday afternoon. Her parents, grandparents and brother, however, were still in the New Orleans area. They had planned to ride out the storm at her home in Covington. She has been unable to contact them since the storm hit.
She, along with many others, has no idea what the future now holds.
"I feel like I'm in a dream. I can't even imagine what the next couple of months are going to be like."

Jason Brown
jbrown@theadvertiser.com
The Daily Advertiser