Nursing home patients dealing well with disaster
By Bob Lind
The Forum
Wayne Stark has already been on the phone to FEMA. "I’ll accept help anywhere I can get it," he said Tuesday.

Stark is chief executive officer of Valley Memorial Homes in Grand Forks. Two of its three buildings have water damage.

He believes Valley will have little trouble gaining federal assistance, even though it is owned by 26 Lutheran churches in the Grand Forks-East Grand Forks area. That’s because it turns nobody away because of their religious belief or any other reason not in line with federal policy.

But all this is a learning experience for Stark. They don’t teach disaster relief at seminary. And they don’t teach you how to evacuate a nursing home in a hurry, with the worst flood in history bearing down on you.

Scattered placements

For the Valley Homes staff, it was more than moving about 275 residents to another facility in town; it was moving them to 67 different locations in the region, along with their medications and medical records.

But it went reasonably smoothly, thanks to the staff, volunteers, neighbors, military personnel and many others who pitched in, Stark said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Stark and some of his office staff moved back to their offices in Grand Forks Monday. "But we have no idea when we can start taking our residents back," he said.

Before that happens, Grand Forks’ water and sewer systems must be restored and United Hospital must be back in operation "so we will have a dependable acute care base to refer our acutely ill patients to," Stark said.

Besides that, the staff must be reassembled "and we don’t know where they all are," he said, although he had a bead on most of them.

How it happened

The first of the three facilities was evacuated at 4 a.m. April 17. As the situation worsened, the second facility was evacuated.

At 5 p.m. Saturday, April 19, the 160-bed Eldercare Center, where the most acutely ill people live, had to cleared.

"We began moving them out with helicopters and overland transportation from Ellendale, LaMoure, Minot, all over eastern North Dakota," Stark said, "and from Groton S.D. Then they began moving them with big choppers that would hold 40 people in wheelchairs to Crookston and Bemidji in Minnesota.

"We had to keep track of where they were going, and make sure they had records and medications with them."

That final night presented an "incredible sight," Stark said. "There were helicopters overhead, fires were burning downtown, there were ambulances and other vehicles loading from five or six different entrances, tractors out there building dikes, lights flashing in the sky – it was war."

"But there was no time to get panicky; it was a well-controlled environment," he said. "Our people settled in and got it done. It was an 11-hour ordeal. When I walked out of that building at 4:30 Sunday morning, I walked out with 45 or so of the finest people I’ve ever seen assembled."

Temporary digs

The home’s offices were set up temporarily at Ascension Lutheran Church at Emerado, N.D., west of Grand Forks. From there, Stark and the office staff made phone and fax contact with the home’s residents. The residents, wherever they wound up, took the move well. In fact, Stark said, "We had fewer deaths in the last week than we can remember (in a similar period) for a long time."