美国国家公共电台 NPR 112 Degrees With No Water: Puerto Rican Hospitals Battle Life And Death Daily

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

And let's turn now to Puerto Rico, where three-quarters of hospitals are still operating on limited emergency power. This creates dangerous conditions for critically ill patients. NPR's John Burnett spent a day with a federal disaster medical team.

JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE 1: Every day across this Caribbean island with its shattered power grid 2, hospitals wage a life-and-death battle to keep their patients from getting sicker in the tropical heat. At the Pavia Arecibo Hospital, about an hour west of San Juan, administrator 3 Jose Luis Rodriguez wipes sweat from his worried brow.

JOSE LUIS RODRIGUEZ: We don't have air conditioning. We can handle maybe a week, but this is already two weeks almost.

BURNETT: The government calls them indirect deaths, those who died after the violent storm - heart attack victims, people on kidney dialysis machines that failed, people who fell off damaged roofs and people killed in auto 4 accidents on highways made more treacherous 5 from Maria's destruction. The official death toll 6 is 34, but because of reports like this from local hospital officials, the number is expected to rise.

RODRIGUEZ: So far, after the storm, we have had 49 dead bodies.

BURNETT: The fourth floor of the hospital has been taken over by stocky Midwesterners in khaki pants, black boots and T-shirts that say DMAT for Disaster Medical Assistance Team. It's a sort of National Guard for medical people that falls under the Department of Health and Human Services. Chief medical officer of this DMAT is Dr. Melissa Stein. She's normally an urgent care physician at Mercy Hospital in St. Louis, currently deployed 7 to Arecibo.

MELISSA STEIN: And so in telling team members coming here, we tell them it's going to be an extremely austere 8 environment.

BURNETT: There is no power, no air conditioning, no local water, no local food, no Internet and very limited communication. Each deployment 9 has its challenges. Here in Arecibo, it was the sweltering sixth-floor cardiac unit.

JIM FEHR: The temperatures up there were as high as 108 degrees, even higher. This was a huge stress on the patients who were quite sick. So we have ended up moving them here to these tents where the hospital staff is caring for them.

BURNETT: That's Jim Fehr, one of the DMAT docs. Lying in the cooling tent is a 77-year-old retired 10 factory worker named Georgina Gonzales. She may have ended up as an indirect victim of the storm had she not been brought here.

GEORGINA GONZALES: (Through interpreter) It was hot, very hot. I was suffocating 11. When they transferred me here on Sunday, they rescued me from the dragon's mouth.

BURNETT: Back on the fourth floor, a distraught woman appears with a shocking story. The hospital an hour away in the city of Aguadilla, she says, has shut down, kicked out its patients and it smells like decomposing 12 bodies. Team commander George Thorp springs into action.

GEORGE THORP: We'll get a strike team out there right away.

BURNETT: Within an hour, the strike team is racing 13 down the highway past utility poles snapped like pencils and the fallen arches of a McDonald's. The team roars up to the Good Samaritan Hospital of Aguadilla. Two heavily armed federal agents enter first. Then comes the DMAT, expecting the worst. They walk down a corridor past bewildered nurses and are ushered 14 into a quiet, orderly office. Nervous laughter all around. Dr. Melissa Stein speaks first.

STEIN: I am the chief medical officer for a national disaster medical assistance team, and we had been told that you needed significant help. I can tell by pulling up, at least the story we were given was somewhat exaggerated.

BURNETT: The hospital administrator, Marilyn Morales, listens politely and responds.

MARILYN MORALES: Our ER department, you know, is in bad condition in terms of the temperature.

STEIN: Got it.

MORALES: If you can install something next to the ER, that would excellent with...

BURNETT: As it turns out, both hospitals are in the same boat. There's no air conditioning. The emergency generators 15 need maintenance, and the patients and staff are hot. After a tour, Stein promises to request some federal help, and the team files back out onto the sidewalk.

STEIN: All right. Saddle back up. Get your packs.

BURNETT: With a big smile, she adds...

STEIN: This is not the hospital of "The Walking Dead," which is what had been described to us.

BURNETT: And that is a good example of what happens after a traumatic weather event when there is no communication, rumors 16 fly and people worry about their hospitals. John Burnett, NPR News, Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

(SOUNDBITE OF TOMAS GUBBINS' "REFUGIO")