Update
Hi all, figured I would put this here:
It appears that the river has crested. It got up to record levels, but not as high as they were predicting. So now, its just seeing if the levees can hold for a longer period of time. I looked at the news this morning, and it appears that a levee broke early this A.M. and flooded a private school. There are only a few area's of town that have flooded. But several other area's have been evacuated for safety reasons.
As for the EMS side of things, all I can say is... WOW, WHAT AN EXPERIENCE! Thanks to all our mutual aid services, they have worked so hard. It is awesome to see how 50+ ambulance services can come together and work together. My thumbs up goes to our management, they were ready and took control. They were able to direct the mutual aid so smoothly. Everything worked out great! Without the direction our management gave, we would still be evacuating today.
We were in charge of evacuating several nursing homes... went smooth and fast. We also had to evacuate a hospital (2 campuses to this hospital), that went... I don't know a word... flawless?! When they made the decision to evacuate Meritcare North and South Campuses, things went fast and smooth. (I wish I could find the news clip of the ambulances lined up outside the hospital. The line going in and out of the ambulance bay so smoothly.) Ambulances were taken people by ground to other cities, as well as taking NICU and ICU pts to the airport to be flown out.
I learned so much from this. If this is not MCI experience, I do not know what is. Well, I am just yammering so I will stop. I just wanted to give you guys a little update.
Take Care,
tydek