photo by: Contributed

LMH Health's main campus at 325 Maine St.

Updated at 4:35 p.m. Monday, Jan. 6

Most of us sat snug inside our homes over the weekend as a blizzard made travel nearly impossible, but that wasn’t an option for essential hospital staff, who had to care for patients and be on hand for winter emergencies.

A Lawrence police officer, Hayden Fowler, used his personal vehicle on his own time to get nine members of LMH Health’s nursing staff in for the overnight Sunday shift, said Mimi Meredith, a spokesperson for the hospital. And on Monday morning, other staff and the community pitched in to get employees home through the snow. Also Monday the Food Service team learned the food delivery truck couldn’t get to the hospital, so Food and Nutrition Director Jeremy Finnestad “managed to get out in his own vehicle to get supplies to ensure patients and staff would be fed,” Meredith said.

Meredith said the hospital’s Incident Command group began meeting on Friday in preparation for the storm, but the safety and facilities team had been preparing even earlier with Douglas County Emergency Management — since the first forecasts came out. Incident Command has been meeting three times a day since, with many individuals taking on additional assignments and roles to help, Meredith said.

“Things considered included obvious ones for any business, such as snow removal, but also ensuring our medical and food supplies and fuel for backup generators were in good supply. Our facilities team worked through the night on Saturday and all day Sunday to keep parking lots and walkways clear at the hospital,” she said.

Inside the hospital, staff prepared to spend the night Saturday night if they couldn’t get home. Some staff slept in conference rooms overnight “so they could help the next shift,” Meredith said.

“Our Environmental Services team, nurses, doctors, laboratory and imaging staff — everyone involved in patient care who could make it in did. It was a great demonstration of teamwork and dedication,” she said.

By Sunday, the amount of snow was the challenge for the next shift coming in. That’s when the officer pitched in to get nurses to the hospital.

Though clinics and outpatient services were closed Monday, the hospital remaining open was critical and the team’s top priority.

“We even had a member of our Board of Trustees offer for staff to stay at her home near the hospital,” Meredith said. “It was a great example of what it means to be a community hospital. The people making the decisions all live here — they knew what it meant for someone in a rural area to try to get to work through the snow and what critical issues needed to be addressed.”

Meredith said that by Saturday afternoon the hospital had been treating an increased number of people in the Emergency Department, primarily for falls and vehicle collisions, but she did not have specific numbers to share.

Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical said it also began preparing for the storm on Friday. LDCFM staffed three utility pickup trucks with overtime personnel starting at noon on Saturday, through noon on Monday. During that timeframe, LDCFM responded to 117 calls, with the utilities being used on 32 of those, according to McKenzi Ezell, interim chief of staff for LDCFM.

The freezing drizzle and subsequent blizzard conditions significantly impacted the department’s responses to emergencies, she said.

On Saturday night a fire apparatus slid down a hill and over the top of a roundabout at Stoneridge Drive and April Rain Road, Ezell said. Minimal damage occurred to the fire apparatus after the street sign was struck at the roundabout, but no injuries were reported from department members.

“The City of Lawrence MSO and Parks and Recreation played a significant role in keeping the stations and main routes as safe as possible during the storm,” Ezell said.