Three years before Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans, a senior executive at Pendleton Memorial Methodist Hospital assessed its vulnerability to the sort of flooding that had been long feared there.
His conclusion is now evidence in a lawsuit against Methodist that could have significant implications for hospitals nationwide.
“The first question is, do we have generators placed to accommodate an emergency flood with 15 feet of water?” wrote Cameron B. Barr, then an executive vice president. “The answer to that question is no.” One of the two main generators was located on a roof, he said, but another “would be nonfunctional at about two feet of flood water around the generator.”
Not only would it have to be relocated, he said, but the power plant and an underground tunnel connecting the plant to the hospital would have to be protected.
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