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Disaster teams aid hospital ERs
Associated Press
Published October 31, 2005
PLANTATION - Six days after Hurricane Wilma, emergency rooms in South Florida are swamped, not with emergencies but with routine medical problems.
With more than 1-million people still without power, many doctors' offices in the region have been closed for a week. In some communities, hospitals have become the only place for people to get health care, said Kerting Baldwin, a spokeswoman for the Memorial Healthcare System, which includes five hospitals in Broward County.
"The hospitals don't stop running," she said. "We do whatever it takes."
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has set up four disaster medical assistance teams at hospitals to help with minor injuries, prescriptions or those trying to follow up on routine medical care.
In Plantation, the Westside Regional Medical Center was seeing double the amount of normal emergency room traffic in the days after Wilma hit, chief executive Earl H. Denning said.
"They were being overrun," said Bill Wallace, who is commanding a team of 35 doctors, nurses and others working out of four tents set up in the hospital's parking lot.
[Last modified October 31, 2005, 03:00:27]
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