
She said as huge gusts of wind started coming in, they could feel the building vibrate.

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To "protect our babies," mattresses were pushed up against the windows to prevent flying glass although none of the windows ended up breaking. Once they got situated at the larger hospital and the winds picked up, Alford said the patients were moved into the hallways. Bossano occasionally posted updates on Facebook. Parents of the other children in the neonatal intensive care unit couldn't stay with them during the storm because there wasn't enough room so Bossano said one nurse was tasked with calling parents to keep them informed of how their children were doing. Two of them had their newborns with them while the child of the third mom was in the intensive care unit. "It went as smooth as could be because we had everyone helping," she said.Īlford said three mothers who couldn't be discharged from the women's hospital were also transferred. Trucks carried needed equipment such as incubators.Īlford said the storm hadn't yet hit but "the skies looked very ominous." She said everyone pitched in to get supplies moved to the other hospital. In a roughly two-hour operation the babies in the intensive care unit were transferred by ambulance to Lake Charles Memorial Hospital, a ten-story facility on the northern side of the city. But in the single story facility, there's no room to move up and storm surge in that area was expected to hit nine feet.
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The hospital has its own generator and hospital administrator Alesha Alford said it was built to withstand hurricane force winds.

Hours before it made landfall, officials had to move the babies from the women's hospital to the main hospital in the system after it became clear that storm surge could inundate the women's hospital, located on the southern end of Lake Charles. Laura made landfall early Thursday morning as a Category 4 storm, packing top winds of 150 mph (241 kph), and pushing a storm surge as high as 15 feet in some areas. Juan Bossano, the medical director of the neonatal intensive care unit at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital for Women. The babies, some on ventilators or eating through a feeding tube, seemed to weather the storm just fine, said Dr. The Associated Press contributed.As the wind howled and the rain slammed down, a team of nurses, respiratory therapists and a doctor worked through the night to care for 19 tiny babies as Hurricane Laura slammed southwestern Louisiana. More than 700,000 people in Louisiana and Texas were without power Thursday afternoon, according to the website PowerOutage.Us, which tracks utility reports. Later Thursday, Laura had weakened to a tropical storm headed toward Arkansas. RELATED: Louisiana girl, 14, died when tree fell on her home during Hurricane Laura

The first reported death, a 14-year-old girl, was in Leesville, Louisiana, more than 100 miles inland from the coast. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said state officials knew of at least four deaths tied to Hurricane Laura, caused by trees falling on residences.

but there ain’t no way to get to them,” Tony Guillory, president of the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury, said over the phone from a Lake Charles government building that was shaking from the storm. “There are some people still in town, and people are calling. Rescue crews descend on Louisiana in aftermath of Hurricane LauraĬrews from several states were dispatched to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura along the Louisiana coastline, which battered buildings, flooded streets and left thousands without power.
