AdventHealth Georgia First Responders Reinforce Sister Hospital in North Carolina

When members of a relief team sent by AdventHealth Georgia reached the emergency operations center of their sister hospital in Hendersonville, North Carolina, a huge cheer erupted in the room and the visitors were deluged with hugs.

Most of the staffers in the room had not left the hospital in days, and many of them no longer had homes to go home to.

“The first thing we tried to do was get them some relief in the command center,” said AdventHealth Murray Director of EMS and Emergency Preparedness Doug Douthitt. “Then we helped them fine tune what they were doing and immediately started helping take critical care patients out.”

The relief team also had three ATVs and crews with chainsaws to help bring in hospital employees who might have been stranded or hadn’t been heard from since the storm hit.

“The biggest issue that they (AdventHealth Hendersonville) had was staffing,” said AdventHealth Redmond Director of EMS and Business Development Scotty Hancock. “They hadn’t had cell coverage or power for days, so we tried to help backfill for their staff.”

Hurricane Helene caused widespread devastation across the region, but the damage in Hendersonville and Asheville were amplified due to the number of mountains and rivers.

“People out here don’t live near the woods, they live in the woods,” said AdventHealth Gordon paramedic Chad Huff. “I’ve never seen devastation like this in terms of trees and power lines down.”

Accessing homes affected everything. What would have been a typical 15-minute trip turned into a four-hour affair as EMS had to chop their way up long driveways to reach homes that had not had power or water for days.

The sheer number of trees and power lines down shocked relief team members, as did the long lines at gas stations.

“There were lines a mile long to get gas,” Huss said. “And if you did get gas before they ran out, the next gas station that happened to get a tanker truck would have lines a mile long too.”

AdventHealth Hendersonville has its own fuel trucks to keep its ambulances and generators running, which also helped get its employees to and from work.

The size of Hurricane Helene also impacted where the most critical patients could be taken to, because most area hospitals were suffering the same problems as AdventHealth Hendersonville.

“So instead of bringing a critical patient to another hospital 30 minutes away, we had to look at hospitals in Raleigh or Charlotte or Duke or Kentucky — and now your roundtrip is four to six hours,” said AdventHealth Murray Paramedic Capt. Paul Walker.

But despite the conditions, members of the relief team said they feel residents are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel, that maybe their lives will return to a sense of normalcy at some point, but it might be a year or more.

“Everybody was very grateful that we were there,” Walker said. “The staff had such great attitudes, but some had been working for two, three or four days and their homes were destroyed. Some hadn’t even been home to see their homes and would just break down and start crying, and some people just needed a hug.”

The locals were also happy to see help coming from everywhere, but there is only so much that could be done, according to Walker.

“We were working in a corridor around the hospital where we could work,” Walker said. “But 15 minutes down the road were people we could not give any aid to because we could not reach them. The damage was unreal.”

Many of the relief team members have already volunteered to go back if AdventHealth Hendersonville still needs them, but it’s clear that the cleanup will take many months or even years.

“We are fortunate to be able to help, and this community will take years to rebuild,” said AdventHealth Redmond Director of Surgical ICU Tyler Layton. “But let’s not forget our own families and kids here in Rome; they give us the strength to help others.”