National Nurses United

8 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G J U LY | A U G U S T | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 NATIONAL T he week Hurricane Harvey was scheduled to hit Houston, Valerie Gray, a labor and delivery RN, learned that her hospital had put her on Team A, the group of staff that would work through and "ride out" the Category 4 storm. She was able to make arrangements for her brother to come out from San Anto- nio to stay and take care of their 81-year-old mother, and then she reported for shift on Friday night, Aug. 25 at 7 p.m. Just hours later, Harvey would make landfall, dump more than 50 inches of rain on greater Houston in just a few days, and put more than a third of the city under water. Gray did not leave the hospital for more than 96 hours. Like her coworkers, she cycled through working 12 hours, sleeping 12 hours. "We all just pulled together and got the job done," said Gray, who said that her hospi- tal saw a steady stream of emergency labor cases and other instances of traumatized women going into labor, especially after the height of the hurricane. Her hospital did not experience any flooding, only a brief electrical outage before the generator kicked in—during which they all ran to the neonatal intensive care unit to help any babies on respirators. "I am very proud of our team." Gray and other National Nurses United RNs throughout southern Texas reported that they felt their facilities were relatively prepared for the unprecedented hurricane, but that it was still frightening and life shat- tering for their patients, their colleagues, and their families who got flooded out of their homes and had to be rescued by boat. In the aftermath, RNs spoke about the generosity of their fellow Texans and how the community is coming together to rebuild, as well as worry about how climate disruption contributed to the disaster and what the storm's lingering aftereffects—whether medical or environ- mental—will be. "I think we'll see [a hurri- cane like this] again because of the environment," said Kim Smith, an intensive care unit RN in Corpus Christi. "The waters are warmer. I've heard a couple times this is a 100-year flood, but it's becoming more common. I can tell in my lifetime that [water levels] are higher here. The warming of the oceans is definitely a concern." On Aug. 31, the Registered Nurse Re - sponse Network (RNRN), the organization affiliated with NNU that coordinates nurses to volunteer in disasters, deployed four nurs- es to Texas to determine if and how RNRN volunteers could best help in the aftermath of Harvey. RNRN teams are now helping provide medical care at Houston's NRG Center, a convention facility sheltering thou- sands of displaced residents. Even if nurses did not themselves sustain damage to their homes, everybody knows someone who has. "[My daughter] had at least three feet of water in her house, so the refrigerator, appliances, flooring are gone. People are helping them cut sheetrock, airing out, pulling out carpet," said Sylvia Higgins, a NICU nurse also from Corpus Christi. "People have really come together and are helping each other." Higgins' home- town escaped major flooding, but her hospi- tal ended up making the right call by evacuating 12 NICU babies 200 miles away, because the facility did lose power for three days because of the storm. Gray said that one coworker who was supposed to report for shift on Team B, the recovery staff, could not make it to work because her driveway was flooded waist high and she would have needed a boat to leave her house. Another one of her colleagues who lived on the second floor of an apart- ment building did not think that the water levels would reach her unit, but she was wrong. Water went up the third floor and she lost everything. She filled out FEMA applications at the hospital. "But she was a trooper, she didn't complain," said Gray. "She said, 'As long as my husband and son are good, we can recover anything. We are just all grateful to be here.'" —Staff report NEWS BRIEFS Nursing Houston Through Hurricane Harvey What RNs experienced during unprecedented storm and flooding

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