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Feature Story

After the Storm: Reviewing the Impact of the 2024 Hurricane Season

The tumultuous 2024 hurricane season may seem like history to the general public. However, the havoc and operational challenges posed by Hurricanes Helene, Kirk, and Milton still live on in the minds of EMS providers.

To reflect on those events from their perspective, EMS World spoke with Premier Mobile Health Services’ Founder and CEO Nadine Singh, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, and Global Medical Response Vice President of Emergency Management Phillip Mongeau. Here is what they had to say in a virtual roundtable discussion.

Singh and Mongeu
Premier Mobile Health Services’ Founder and CEO Nadine Singh, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, and Global Medical Response Vice President of Emergency Management Phillip Mongeau.

Premier Mobile Health Services' nonprofit mission is to provide access to the highest quality healthcare services to the medically vulnerable and those who are most at risk of developing and experiencing long-term illness and hospitalization. “We currently have two mobile clinics that we deploy twice a month to five different locations in Lee and Collier counties in Florida,” Singh said. “After Hurricane Milton, we used the mobile clinics to provide aid to some of the hardest hit areas like Fort Myers Beach and Sun Coast Estates.”

Global Medical Response (GMR) is one of the largest private EMS agencies in the nation, providing air and ground emergency medical care and transport in all 50 states including Washington D.C., as well as globally. GMR’s Office of Emergency Management supports FEMA and some national health systems with medical transportation during and after disasters.

EMS World: How was your agency affected by the recent set of hurricanes in the Southeastern United States?

Flood waters after Hurricane Helene
Damage from Hurricane Helene in Greenville, South Carolina. (Shutterstock)

Singh: Because of Hurricane Milton, we had to close our office for three days. However, immediately following the storm, we took the road to assess the damage and to see where the needs were greatest.

Mongeau: As the prime contractor for the National Ambulance contract, our Emergency Management Office leads all responses for ground and air medical transport on behalf of FEMA. So anytime that there's a large disaster of any kind we are the agency that leads the emergency medical response. Both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton met that threshold whereby FEMA activated us to lead the emergency medical response on their behalf to the many states those hurricanes affected. Additionally, our parent company Global Medical Response has local operations in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas that also took direct hits from those hurricanes, and responded to those local events as they would do in any storm.

EMS World: What were the biggest challenges that you faced during these events?

Singh: Frankly, the biggest challenge was the fact that we only had two mobile clinics. There were so many communities in dire need of not only medical attention, but simple basics as well.

Closed Road from Hurricane Helene
US21 road closed due to damage from Hurricane Helene. (Shutterstock)

Mongeau: The fact that these two storms were back-to-back large hurricanes that threatened the mainland certainly caused challenges for us to staff enough ground ambulances, which required us to use the resources of the entire country to do so. It's the first time that we have been asked to deploy over 800 ambulances simultaneously, and that was for Helene. When you added Milton on top of it, the challenge of the staffing for this response was exacerbated further.

Thankfully, we were able to meet that demand from FEMA to bring in those 800-plus ambulances. We did that by pulling staff and resources from 96 other subcontracted companies, including staff and personnel from our own company. You can imagine the logistics required to move those personnel and assets from across the entire country into North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia.

EMS World: How did you cope with these challenges?

Singh: We connected with the Red Cross, the United Way, FEMA, and other agencies by Zoom twice a week to see what each individual agency's community needs were, and what resources we all had available to help each other. This collective sharing of information allowed us to more effectively provide care directly where it was needed.

Damage hurricane Milton
Tornadoes spun from Hurricane Milton caused damage in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. (Shutterstock)

Mongeau: We are very fortunate to have a very capable team here in our Office of Emergency Management that's been doing EMS disaster response for more than 20 years. We have been in this prime contractor role for FEMA since post-Katrina, so our experience and ability to be able to professionally move and provide the service to our nation comes from a wealth of experience.

We are also able to cope with these challenges due to the size of our company. Global Medical Response can pull from our own logistics, equipment, staff, and capabilities. Because of this, we have the bench strength to lead these efforts. Those resources along with the 200 subcontracted companies that work under our leadership and control help us do this.

EMS World: Were there lessons learned that you will apply to future such events?

Singh: This was not our first rodeo. We learned our lessons after Hurricane Ian in 2022, when we found out that we needed to have more Tetanus shots and other medications, medical supplies including bandages, wipes, tape, and gauze on hand, just to name a few.

Hurricane Milton damage
Debris on the streets of St. Petersburg Beach, Florida after Hurricane Milton. (Shutterstock)​​​​​​

Mongeau: Given how large these storms were, they certainly made us realize how important building depth in our team is and how critical continuing to train them properly is.

Communication is always a challenge, especially when you get into a Category 4/5 Hurricane that took out telecommunication capabilities. Thankfully, we have our own telecommunications equipment through AT&T FirstNet. The lesson learned here was how critical those capabilities are. GMR makes continual investments in our communications technology to ensure we can effectively communicate with our teams during deployment. 

Singh: Besides lessons learned, our sincere thanks go out to our partner agencies, volunteers, staff, and organizations like the Red Cross, The United Way of Lee County, Direct Relief and Baby2Baby, Americares and the Scripps Howard Fund who stepped up and helped Premier Mobile Health Services in that time of great need.