Posted by: AGelbert
« on: October 08, 2024, 02:58:21 pm »
By Dave Muoio Updated Tuesday, Oct. 8 at 1:15 p.m.
A rapidly intensifying Hurricane Milton has Florida and its healthcare providers gearing up for another severe weather event less than two weeks after similar preparations for Hurricane Helene.
As of midday Tuesday, over 200 healthcare facilities, including 12 hospitals and freestanding hospital emergency departments, have initiated evacuations, officials and the Florida Hospital Association said. The evacuations are primarily focused in Florida's Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, which include St. Petersburg and Tampa.
"The challenge as a result of Helene is that those areas that are likely to be significantly impacted by Milton are still contending with debris everywhere, the sand and other debris clogging drains," Mary Mayhew, president and CEO of the Florida Hospital Association, told Fierce Healthcare Tuesday. "Milton is forecasted to have a significant surge along the coast and a volume of rain, so the vulnerability to extreme flooding is significant."
Hurricane Milton jumped ahead of weekend forecasts when it strengthened to a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico midday Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
It is expected to drop to a strong Category 3 by the time it makes landfall late Wednesday or early Thursday near Tampa—still “a very large and powerful hurricane … with life-threatening hazards at the coastline and well inland,” the service warned. Unlike September’s Hurricane Helene, which brought destruction to the states north of Florida, it is projected to move east through Florida and out to the Atlantic.
While a strong storm in its own respect, the short turnaround from Helene has officials worried that saturated groundwater, strained infrastructure and, in particular, uncleared debris could compound the damage.
“That creates a huge hazard,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed a state of emergency declaration for 51 counties, said during a Monday afternoon press conference.
During Monday and Tuesday addresses, the governor noted that the state was prioritizing hospitals alongside other critical infrastructure, and had recently coordinated the construction of a flood wall around an unnamed hospital.
Florida’s Department of Health has deployed almost 600 emergency response vehicles, including more than 350 ambulances on hand to support first responders, officials said.
Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) said it is conducting daily calls with the Florida Hospital Association and Florida Healthcare Association alongside other emergency event reporting procedures. The groups had relied on similar coordination efforts leading up to Helene, during which a total of six hospitals across the state were forced to evacuate patients.
As of Tuesday morning, AHCA said it had received reports of 212 healthcare facility evacuations, including 10 hospitals, two freestanding hospital emergency departments, 115 assisted living facilities and 50 nursing homes.
AHCA has also made nearly 700 phone calls to providers ahead of the storm's landfall, and said it has "waived all prior authorization requirements for critical Medicaid."
Care coordination, lingering supply chain disruption, administrative hurdles loom
Fortunately, Mayhew said that the state's hospitals had not suffered "any significant damage to their physical plant" as a result of September's Helene, which she credited to comprehensive investments in flood mitigation systems, electrical infrastructure and other areas.
However, the homes of many hospital employees living in Helene's path were affected, "and so certainly the ability to staff and support our employees is critically important as we brace for Milton."
Additionally, Mayhew noted that hospitals are already dealing with a shortage of IV solutions after a plant supplying over 60% of the country's supply was shut down by Helene. Further disruptions are "clearly part of the equation for concern if this storm compounds access to those supplies or any other critical hospital supply," such as fuel for hospital generators, she said.
Preparations to minimize disruptions in patient care are a priority at the moment, but Mayhew acknowledged that much of the hospitals and her group's work will come in Milton's wake.
"One of the roles we seek to play as an association is gathering real-time data and information to inform areas of need and opportunities for engagement and coordination among our hospitals in response to emergencies," she explained.
The could relate to transferring patients if a facility is damaged, coordinating supplies and picking up the slack for community-level care.
"The impact on retail pharmacies, on assisted living facilities, is critically important," she said. "We've had hospitals that have had to fulfill that role, that have a retail pharmacy license when the local retail pharmacy was offline. There are patients in our hospitals that may be ready for discharge back to their assisted living facility, and yet that assisted living facility is no longer functional because of the impact of the storm. All of that will be part of the equation as we as we respond and as we recover."
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/providers/florida-hospitals-again-evacuating-patients-ahead-back-back-hurricane
October 6, 2024 
Extinction Rebellion
tanks and fighter jets pouring out their projectiles over the land: the Merkavas and the F-16s sending their hellfire over the Palestinians, the rockets and bombs that turn everything into rubble — but only after the explosive force of fossil fuel combustion has put them on the right trajectory,” writes Malm who with Wim Carton wrote “Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown.” “All these military vehicles run on petroleum. So do the supply flights from the US, the Boeings that ferry the missiles over the permanent airbridge. An early, provisional, conservative analysis found that emissions caused during the first 60 days of the war equaled annual emissions of between 20 and 33 low-emitting countries: a sudden spike, a plume of CO2 rising over the debris of Gaza. If I repeat the point here, it is because the cycle is self-repeating, only growing in scale and size: Western forces pulverize the living quarters of Palestine by mobilizing the boundless capacity for destruction only fossil fuels can give.”
Reporters fanned out across the state Thursday to capture stories of damage and recovery
many are very poor, and 
done,
for many innocent victims of the inevitable ☠️ 
warned that the West's exploitative economic model is bringing back 
in the face of 
