Tornado Lashes Hospital, CEO Puts Focus on Recovery

The interim CEO of a small Mississippi hospital survived a devastating tornado, but his hospital did not. Though he mourns the loss of life and property, his outlook is strategic: "Let's make the best of it and come out of it better."

It's been 10 days since an EF4 tornado corkscrewed down from the black skies over Winston County, MS, and changed everything on the ground for the people who live there.

The storm's 160-mph winds cut a swath of death and destruction across Winston County, located about 90 miles northeast of Jackson. It killed nine people and wreaked millions of dollars in property damage as part of violent weather front that claimed 34 lives in six states on April 28.

Winston Medical Center in Louisville, pop. 6,600, the county seat, was in the path of the funnel cloud. The 27-bed hospital sustained heavy interior damage and has since closed its doors.

One patient suffered a laceration to the back of his head, but otherwise none of the 11 patients or staff huddled inside the hospital hallways were seriously injured when the twister blew out windows, ripped down ceiling tiles, and tossed debris throughout the interior.

Interim CEO Paul Black, on the job for less than one week, was in the hospital emergency room that afternoon monitoring the storm on local media and hoping for the best. Right about then things took a turn for the worst.

"It was a direct hit, or we were on the outer edge of the funnel but we were in the funnel. When you've got cars turned upside down on top of each other in the parking lot, it was a real hairy situation," Black said in a telephone interview.

"We had enough warning to where we had all of the patients up on the floors in the hallways in safe places. Then we were sitting there on hold, watching where it was going. It was going along a path that looked like it was going to miss us. It was almost like it got to a road sign on one of the highways and then it turned left and headed right at us. And minutes later it was right on us. It was hairy at that point. When it turned, we knew we were in trouble."

The storm damage forced the closure of the hospital, and an abutting 120-bed nursing home. Black and his team spent most of their time in the immediate aftermath finding new housing for the hospital patients and the nursing home residents while providing triage medical services for the many injured people in the shattered community.

Temporary Hospital Imminent
"If your staff is well trained then you will go off of instincts and trust the staff to do the right thing but you can never really prepare," he says. "Everybody knows what to do when you get the tornado warning. You get them in the hallways and wait for things to ride out. And maybe the lights will go off or something like that. But you don't expect the windows to go out and stuff to start flying everywhere."

Winston County got immediate help from an emergency response team from the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and in days immediately after the storm, crews and aid have arrived from the Mississippi National Guard, other state emergency responders, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

A modular hospital, on loan from FEMA, was shipped down from North Carolina and is now under construction. It is expected to be operational within two weeks. "When that is done we should have a functioning hospital," Black says. "We are excited about that. A functioning modular temporary hospital that at least gives us the opportunity to start providing care for the people of Winston County again."

"We will have an emergency area, X-ray, lab pharmacy, about 10 to 12 acute care beds where we can house patients overnight. It is going to be on-site and offering 24-7 [care] just like normal."

Once the temporary hospital is open and healthcare access is stabilized, the people of Winston County will have to make a decision about their hospital. Black says stakeholders are looking at their options and "we are leaning real heavily toward tearing it down and building new."

"We are getting close to a decision. There are some variables we have to figure out. A lot of the facility is old, some of it is 50 years old. It's at the end of its useful life anyway," he says.

"The fact that we have a three-story tower and there is structural damage to it makes it real difficult to decide if it is safe or not, or if we're even able to renovate and make it useful. It might be more economical to tear that building down and build something new and make it more modern and a lot more useable."

From a Makeshift Office, an Eye Toward 'Triumph'
Black had been CFO at Winston Medical Center for several years. He was named Interim CEO on April 22, but the job description changed abruptly six days later. His new office is the front seat of a loaner pick-up truck. His personal car was destroyed by the tornado in the hospital parking lot. He conducted this interview on his cell phone.

"It's been hectic, to say the least," he says. "You get up every morning and you just start doing. You start talking to people. I am relying on a lot of people. I have learned real quick that I can't do everything. I have a good group of people and I lean on them. As far as how the staff handled this situation, I don't think anybody could have done a better job."

And now Black finds himself torn with conflicting emotions. On the one hand, he mourns the loss of life and the destruction sown by the tornado. On the other hand, as a professional hospital administrator, he is excited about his critical role in helping to reformulate how healthcare will be delivered in Winston County for the next 50 years or longer.

"It's one of those things that you are excited about what could be in the future and at the same time you want to temper that with thinking about how you got there," he says.

"You don't like how we've gotten into this situation but now that we have been dealt this hand let's make the best of it and come out of it better. Let's have state-of-the-art hospital for all the citizens so we can say we took a tragedy and turned it into a triumph. It sounds corny, but that is about all I can think of right now."