Schoolhouse Mobile Clinic assists with flood relief
Aug. 12—Eastern Kentucky is continuing to see record flooding and people there are in desperate need of medical care.
In response, Lake Cumberland Regional hospital has sent a Mobile Clinic to Eastern Kentucky packed with medical supplies as well as water, food, cleaning items, baby items, blankets, and more to alleviate the harm that has come to the People of Eastern Kentucky.
Many of these items were donated by people across the commonwealth to treat those worst afflicted.
The Schoolhouse Mobile Clinic was created in 2019 to assist schoolchildren whose parents are too busy at work to have their children treated in hospitals. However, the clinic has since expanded its care to provide disaster relief to Kentuckians.
A notable instance of this was after last year's tornado, which devastated Western Kentucky and left 58 dead.
The team of seven who went to eastern Kentucky included Dr. Barry Dixon, President of Physician Services and Valerie Allen, APRN with Lake Cumberland Schoolhouse Health.
Hailing from the eastern part of the state themselves, their need to provide relief was personal.
"One clinic I stopped and looked at in was Isom, which is where I'm from," said Dr. Dixon. "There's two feet of mud in the parking lot and in the building. They're still shoveling that out with Bobcats. It's just amazing. Until you see it firsthand, you just don't realize."
Dr. Allen clarified the teams goals in a press release.
"The mission of the Mobile Clinic is to be ready at a moment's notice to help the citizens in need, and right now, our neighbors in Eastern Kentucky need our help," said Allen.
Robert Parker, CEO of Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital, said "We are concerned about the communities impacted by the flooding," he said. "We are using our resources to provide immediate relief and recovery assistance to those impacted by the storm. We thank all those involved for their tireless efforts and want to do everything we can to assist them."
Dr. Dixon said a spike in positive cases of COVID-19 could possible be expected due to people huddling close to consolidate resources.
"You have all these people coming into one central location to get [resources]," said Dixon. "For instance, if you look at Gospel Light Church in Hazard right now there's 89 people living there in that church building."
These people whose homes had washed away in the rushing water have few methods of self-isolation.
"You go to other rescue places, there's 100 people here, there's 132 people over here, and they're all together, so you're going to see the number of COVID cases go up markedly."
The chiefest concern for the team was providing vaccinations to victims. Muddy water easily finds its way into small cuts which can cause infection, and ensuring people are properly inoculated has been a top priority.
Among the most important vaccinations is for tetanus. Also known as lockjaw, tetanus is a bacterial infection which causes painful muscle contractions and spasms.
While vaccinations for this disease are common, the risk of encountering this illness are low under normal circumstances. However, due to the contaminated water filling Eastern Kentucky, people are at high risk and have likely not received a vaccination for tetanus in years.
"The last tetanus booster I got had been 17 years before, I just didn't think about it, and I'm in the medical profession," said Dixon. "So most people are well-over their 10 years."
Hepatitis A was also a major risk, and many flooding victims were inoculated for it as well.
"Mostly vaccinations. People come in with cuts and scrapes. One gentleman chained himself to a guard rail to keep him and his wife from washing away," said Dixon.
Nursing supervisor at LCMA Rob Edwards who also travelled with the team to Eastern Kentucky estimated 100 tetanus shots were administered the last day the team was there.
"We ran out of doses early in the morning, and we had to ship in more," said Dixon.
Dixon claimed only half of the people who needed vaccinations were flooding victims. The rest were rescue teams who needed boosters to continue to pull people from flooded areas.
Thankfully, said Dixon, while concerns about vaccines have increased in connection with COVID-19, people were more than willing to receive their shots.
"Most people, if they get a cut or a scratch, they will take a tetanus shot pretty easily. It's not like giving vaccines. COVID vaccines, you're having to put aside a lot of fears," Dixon said. "People that have been cut, scraped, and scratched, they just walk up and take their tetanus shot. Pretty easily. We really don't have to talk many people at all into that one."
Medical supplies are scarce, and it was the teams mission to provide as many as possible. Dixon told of Letcher County's clinic, which was destroyed by flooding and lost almost all of their medical supplies. Medical records stored electronically will likely be able to be recovered, says Dixon, but little can be salvaged beyond that.
"They lost everything. Both their clinics were six to seven feet underwater," said Dixon.
The team provided them with as much as they could—even "simple" items like glucose monitors and blood pressure cuffs were a necessity.
"They say, 'We've got plenty of help. We just need the supplies. We've got the bodies to see people; we just need supplies to take care of those people,'" recalled Dixon.
Dixon said one overlooked item of necessity was cleaning supplies. Thanks to donations, those in eastern Kentucky have clothes and "tons" of potable water. However, items to help destroy the mold capitalizing on the moisture provided by the flooding are invaluable.
East Perry Elementary School's gymnasium had been packed with relief items. Dixon recalled the donations filling the building to the brim available to those who needed help.
"You can't describe it," said Dixon. "You go in that big huge gym, and it is wall-to-wall with clothes and diapers and formula. Every square inch has something sitting it."
Dixon estimated thousands of people had already come through to receive donations.
He noted, however, an unfortunate drop in assistance from those in Kentucky whose passion to help people had dwindled as the crisis sees no swift end.
Said Dixon, "They had almost 600 volunteers on the first day they opened this school to help give out supplies and unload. The next day they got 500 hundred. The next day 400. It's like anything else. The fear is people forget about this. In about two to three weeks, it's old news."
"This is going to take months of ongoing care," Dixon continued.
Clearing the flooding and repairing the roads is only a small part of what reversing the damage.
"A lot of those places, there's total loss of everything. There's no trailers. There's no homes. There's nothing," said Dixon.
Efforts to provide housing and buildings which provide important social services like schools and stores could take months to mobilize.
Dixon told of what he felt was the most heartbreaking story. Team members travelled to the town of Buckhorn which had received some of the worst destruction. One elderly man's home was in shambles and had no option but to abandon it.
Said Dixon, "They would take food and give it to people who were afraid to leave their homes and trailers because of looting. What's left, they were afraid somebody's going to steal. So they don't have any running water. They don't have any electricity. It's 95 degrees the day we're delivering food. It's miserable. And the one little guy's in his eighties, and he's born and raised in Buckhorn. And he's lived in that spot all his life. He has no other family members here."
The man said he would ultimately have to leave Kentucky and stay with his daughter in Ohio. "I don't have any other choice," the man said.
"That's the thing you see. People are displaced and having to move. There's no quick build-back," Dixon said.
While the situation is grim, Dixon still felt positive about what the team accomplished. The team was greatly moved by the everyday people who fought back against the disaster which threatened their home.
