Hospital recovery begins
By Gerry Gilmour
The Forum
GRAND FORKS, N.D. – United Hospital begins its post-flood comeback today with the reopening of its emergency room.

The hospital and its surrounding Medical Park campus were evacuated April 18-19 as water closed in from all four sides.

More than 100 ambulance teams, all volunteering their services, poured into Grand Forks from the surrounding region.

Some 200 hospital patients were taken by ambulance and helicopter to 35 medical facilities in the Midwest. They went as far east as the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and the University of Minnesota medical facility in Minneapolis and as far west as Minot, N.D.

Another 300 nursing home residents, rehabilitation patients and congregate living residents were moved to comparable facilities in the region or to be with families until the Medical Park campus reopens.

The campus is on the west side of Grand Forks, bounded on the south by the Columbia Mall area, on the east by Columbia Road and on the west by the English Coulee.

The half-dozen major buildings on campus – protected by a last-minute ring dike – escaped major flood damage.

"The evacuation of patients wasn’t on my mind or anyone else’s mind until the Red River crest predictions began to rise and city officials became more and more concerned about the city’s infrastructure," hospital president Rosemary Jacobson said Thursday.

She said the hospital has contingency plans to operate on a diesel generator for as long as a month. The severity of the expected flooding drove the decision to evacuate.

"Without a safe supply of water, we needed a plan for the long term, Jacobson said. "I never believed water could be so critical."

The water arrived this week.

Quartermaster units from the North Dakota Army National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve units from Bismarck, N.D., and Montana are supplying potable water for the reopening of the hospital.

The units will draw and purify 50,000 gallons of water per day from the English Coulee and pump that into the hospital’s supply system, Jacobson said.

Until that system is fully operational, emergency surgery and obstetrics care is being provided at Grand Forks Air Force Base. Jacobson said they even were asked to add an open heart team there as a precaution for President Clinton’s visit.

Chief nurse Margaret Reed said the hospital, anticipating the flood, brought in extra medical and surgical supplies. Those have been distributed to emergency satellite hospital sites at the Air Force base and in Crookston, Minn., she said.

Hospital chief executive officer Dave Molmen said those patients moved to other facilities will remain and be cared for at those facilities until discharged.

He said United Hospital will begin accepting new patients as soon as safety issues, such as fire protection, are permanently addressed. He said he expects the first patients to be admitted by May 12.

Employees are being brought back in phases to help re-establish the hospital and the Grand Forks Clinic. The hospital and clinic merge this summer.

"There are very few who weren’t impacted by this in their homes," Molmen said, adding that many put the interests of the hospital and its patients ahead of their own.

The eight major blizzards this past winter actually helped the hospital and clinic forge a disaster plan, he said.

"We had a horrific disaster here, but in the scheme of things, we were really spared from the worst of it," he said.