Katrina! What Went Right

For Rick Earls, the days before Hurricane Katrina hit were pretty much routine. As branch manager of Columbus, Miss.-based Southern Pharmaceutical Corp.'s Gulfport and Hattiesburg locations, Earls was no stranger to keeping an eye out for developing storms.

Only blocks from the beach, SPC's Gulfport facility, with an active rental list of 1,100 patients for its home medical equipment — 400 of those on oxygen — is particularly vulnerable. Earls typically prepares for hurricanes as many as eight times in a given year. Up to this point in his career, each time had been a false alarm.

But Aug. 29 would be different.

On Friday morning, Aug. 26, Earls says the storm looked like just another hurricane headed for Florida. But continually receiving updates from a number of different weather reporting sources, he soon learned that the hurricane's path was headed farther west.

“Friday morning, people didn't even know who Katrina was,” Earls says.

They certainly won't forget her now.

SPC's operating procedures dictate that the staff start patient notification 72 hours before a hurricane's projected landfall. With a weekend landing a real possibility, they didn't have a moment to lose. Friday afternoon at five o'clock is not exactly the ideal time to be implementing a disaster plan, Earls points out. But all of the Gulfport employees knew exactly what was expected of them and what needed to be done.

On Saturday morning the weather was deceptively beautiful: blue skies, a nice breeze. But by Sunday night, after company vehicles had been moved, windows boarded up and patient charts, oxygen tanks and other equipment loaded and driven away, the winds were quickly approaching the 35 mph threshold at which employees are required by SPC to evacuate the facility.

That evening, Earls delivered last-minute supplies to local Red Cross shelters. After a check to make sure that the Hattiesburg branch would be staffed immediately following the storm, he headed to his home in Biloxi to ride it out.

On Monday morning, Earls watched as raging winds twisted huge trees just outside his window. “Just a half mile from our house, homes were literally destroyed, swept completely off their slabs,” he says. “We lost a significant number of shingles and a few trees, but that was most of the damage.”

The Gulfport branch building wasn't as lucky. The showroom was blown apart, wheelchairs and other equipment scattered, and the roof of one the warehouses torn off.