REMEMBER THE SCENES of awesome destruction caused by the May 3rd tornadoes in Oklahoma City? Some of those destroyed homes had oxygen patients living in them.

For all the high technology utilized in home medical equipment and by those who provide it, let one natural disaster pull the plug on a city's electricity and the result can be devastating.

Several HME providers in the Oklahoma City area, however, dealt resourcefully with the recent havoc in their community. They heard the radio warnings, saw the black funnel clouds, began getting media reports of widespread devastation, then set into motion their companies' disaster plans.

"The first thing you realize is the trouble you're going to have communicating," says Bob McCormick, president of Norman Regional Home Medical Equipment, Norman, Okla. "Phone lines were down, so everybody was using cell phones. But those lines got overloaded and were unreliable."

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations requires HME providers to have a disaster plan in place-and Norman Regional's plan specifically anticipates communications problems. Employees are instructed not to wait to be contacted in emergency situations, just report to the office, which, McCormick says, they did.

In nearby El Reno, Jeff Wills of Canadian Valley Medical Solutions circumvented potential communications logjams by directly contacting employees through alphanumeric pagers and high-frequency two-way radios.

"We have 500 oxygen patients, and about 50 of them were in the affected areas," says Wills. "But we were able to mobilize our people."

Kevin Barnes, owner of Oklahoma Respiratory Care in Norman, knew which patients were in the path of the tornado because his computer could list all his patients and the equipment they use by ZIP code. "It was pretty crazy because I was cut off from getting back to the office, but when we finally had reached everybody, we didn't have anybody in an emergency situation," Barnes says. "Our software also saved a lot of time by telling us which patients had emergency-type equipment, and we prioritized that way."

Of course, tracking down the patients themselves wasn't always easy. Wills' drivers managed to find two ventilator patients who had taken direct hits and needed supplies, but other patients could not be reached by phone. And when drivers tried to find their homes, they often could not get through the rubble created by the tornadoes. Only with the help of emergency personnel was contact finally made.

Wills' drivers handed off E-cylinders with compressed gas and liquid oxygen canisters to firefighters, who used four-wheel-drive vehicles to make the HME deliveries. Fortunately, says Wills, he had decided to keep extra canisters filled and on the shelf after two earlier tornadoes had hit the area.

To serve his customers, McCormick had to arrange for them to pick up cylinders at an emergency command center set up at a local church. None of his patients took a direct hit, he reports, although one using high-humidity oxygen equipment had to be set up in a hotel for a week.

"Every one of our patients had backup oxygen, so we knew they were going to make it through the night," McCormick says. "Overall, I'm pleased with how we handled it. It really showed us the importance of having that disaster plan in place."

For more on weathering natural disasters, see "Storm Warning" in the March 1999 issue of HomeCare Magazine.