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Jack Sariego, MD

Arch Surg. 2007;142(2):203-205.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Hurricane Katrina—at one point a category 5 hurricane—struck the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, and was the largest natural disaster in American history.¹ It resulted in extensive physical damage, destroying hundreds of thousands of homes, displacing nearly a million people, and partially or completely incapacitating virtually every hospital in its path.² This included most of the trauma centers throughout Mississippi and Louisiana. Because trauma centers are by their nature best equipped to manage mass casualties resulting from natural and/or other disasters,³ the loss of many of these centers in the immediate posthurricane period adversely impacted the delivery of patient care. Several trauma centers, however, were able to resume functioning shortly after the storm, and a few were able to continue operating even during the hurricane. One such trauma center was Ocean Springs Hospital (OSH) in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, a 126-bed level III trauma center very close . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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