SAN DIEGO--Wildfires fanned by ferocious winds charred much of Southern California last week, leaving behind death and massive destruction--and stories of efforts by home medical equipment providers to care for their patients.
In San Diego, even as their own location was threatened, Apria employees managed to deliver hundreds of products, including oxygen, to patients before having to flee the area themselves. In Santa Clarita, Shield Healthcare staff tracked down shipments of vital enteral nutrition products and delivered them to patients who had been displaced. In Santa Monica, Wishing Well Medical staff ramped up oxygen deliveries to those severely affected by the choking smoke and provided oxygen to patients who had been evacuated from their Malibu homes to lodging in hotels.
San Diego manufacturer SeQual Technologies loaned 35 of its Eclipse units to evacuees at the city's QualComm stadium--and sent a manager to train people on using the portable oxygen concentrator.
The fires, the first of which started in Malibu on Sunday, Oct. 21, raged across the southern part of the state and along the Mexican border, consuming more than a half-million acres and reducing about 2,000 homes to ashes. More than 500,000 people were evacuated from their homes; others experienced lengthy power outages brought on by the Santa Ana winds, which in some mountainous areas reached 100 mph.
As of Friday, seven people had died in the fires, and damage estimates topped $1 billion.
For HME providers in the affected areas, concerns centered on taking care of patients.
"We service more than 20,000 patients in the areas impacted by the fires, most of whom have been directly affected in some way, either by being displaced or having extreme smoke conditions around their home," said Apria's Steve Foreman, regional vice president of operations for Southern California, who coordinated the response from the company's 22 branch locations affected by the fires.
Apria implemented its disaster preparedness plan, which calls for contacting all critical care patients throughout the area. "We reviewed the evacuation shelter list and equipment needs with them, such as assessing the status of their back-up batteries and portable suction units. Then we contacted or attempted to reach all respiratory patients to make sure that they had adequate supplies until we could get to them," Foreman said.
At Apria's Riverside branch, which services many patients in the fire-stricken mountain community of Lake Arrowhead, "we did a pretty good job of reaching everyone," said branch manager Diana Castro. "We told them to take as much equipment as they could--but safety first--and whatever they didn't have, we'd take care of them."
One man who had been evacuated called the office in a panic. He'd fled with his CPAP but had forgotten his mask. "How am I going to sleep tonight?" he asked.
"You're going to come here and we're going to take care of you," was the reply. The man was given a mask.
At the San Diego Apria location, the situation was even more dire. "Our San Diego staff worked through the night to ensure that all deliveries were made and patients had an emergency contact," Foreman said. "This included making over 375 deliveries on Monday before our branch was given a mandatory evacuation order by fire authorities."
Forced to leave their business location, employees kept on, however. "Even though we had to close our San Diego office, we were able to handle our site, and we were still able to handle the phone calls," Foreman said, noting that Apria uses a Nextel communication system that allowed continued tracking of patients.
The San Diego fire even affected Apria's Tustin branch. An assisted living facility in Laguna Hills had contacted Apria for help. The facility had a sister complex in San Diego that needed to be evacuated. Patients would be transported to the Laguna Hills site, but they needed beds. Could Apria provide those beds?
"At first, I wasn't sure if we could fit the delivery into our schedule given the magnitude of the emergency facing our existing patients, but as soon as I mentioned it to my team, they wanted to help," said Foreman.
Tustin's branch manager, Kris Fishman, and his team took on the job. In three-and-a-half hours on Monday morning, he and four other employees assembled 30 beds; 15 others were ready to go. "We went down there and took care of it," Fishman said, adding that his team not only delivered the beds but prepared the rooms for the evacuated patients.
"The drivers delivered the beds well into the night and the patients were all transferred safely and without incident," Foreman said, noting that without the help of Fishman and his team, those patients might have had to be hospitalized or sent to an emergency room.
So many Apria patients were affected in the eastern part of San Diego County that the company staffed an Escondido shelter with a logistics manager and equipment to help its patients as well as some who were originally serviced by other providers, officials said. Ironically, Apria's own headquarters in Lake Forest were evacuated.
Meanwhile, in Santa Clarita, Paul Collins, director of client services for Shield Healthcare, found his corporate headquarters in the center of three fires. Forty to 50 percent of his workforce couldn't get to the office either because of road closures, evacuations or because all daycare services were closed.
"The good news is, we have a solid workforce of people who really care about our patients," he said, and everyone who could get there was there, willing to work the phones.
Because Shield handles ostomy and incontinence supplies, enteral nutrition and some wound care products that are regularly shipped directly to the patient, employees needed to ensure that those shipments had reached their destinations. "They really allow our customers to live their lives at home; without our products, they have to go to the hospital," Collins said.
Even as the flames flared visibly outside their windows, Shield employees tracked down and reshipped the vital products, Collins said. Sadly, he said, some of the original shipments had been lost along with the patients' homes.
In Santa Monica, Donny Albrecht, vice president of Wishing Well Medical, sought to get oxygen to Malibu patients who had been evacuated and also worked to care for those who live in Santa Monica.
"The air quality for people on oxygen is really tough for them," he said about the acrid smoke that lay heavy over the area. "It's increasing their need for oxygen."
It was also sparking a run on masks, he said, as healthy people sought to protect their lungs from the smoke-polluted air.
But even as the inferno raged, there were some heartening times.
"We had many people who called to see how our employees were doing," Collins said. "That really lifted their spirits and kept them motivated."
For his part, Foreman, who was once a firefighter, said, "I am
so proud of our entire Southern California Apria team right now.
It's the same kind of feeling I used to get when we beat back a
wildfire--to know we are helping people cope with this crisis makes
everyone feel good."