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SRH OB Nurses Speak About Tornado

For Sumter Regional Hospital Obstetrician Registered Nurses Daphene Revel, Crystal Wiggins and Wendy Driver, March 1, 2007, seemed like a routine afternoon of duty, however, as the evening unfolded, it proved to be far from routine.
“We knew there was bad weather on its way, but we had no idea it would hit us in this way,” said Revel.

Revel was one of seven nurses on duty the night a tornado hit Sumter Regional Hospital, leaving it in shambles.
According to Revel, the evening of March 1, the obstetrician unit consisted of 11 patients, four babies, nurses on duty and visitors.

“We were instructed to keep the patients away from the windows and place the babies inside the rooms with their mothers, within arms' reach,” said Revel.

The nurses rapidly followed their instructions and secured the patients and warned them of bad weather conditions.
Wiggins, an RN on the unit, said she was on her way to a patient's room and her ears started popping and she asked the patient if her ears were popping and she answered, “yes.” Then, Wiggins grabbed the patient and said, “come with me.” They immediately entered the hallway and Revel said this is when the tornado struck.
“The lights flickered and then I heard all of the windows explode. It seemed as though they were exploding all at one time!” said Wiggins.

Wiggins described the air surrounding her as the color of gray.

“The wind was so strong and the air had dirt and debris which started flying everywhere,” she said, as she described ceiling tiles, wood pieces, pine needles, glass, insulation and papers from inside the nurses' station flying forcefully through the corridors.

The only thing the nurses on duty said they knew to do was to grab hold of the side railing and hold on.

“I knew I weighed a lot, and I was hoping it would not take me away, the wind was so powerful! All I knew was to hold on to the rail and drop down,” said Revel with a laugh as she explained the tornado being over within seconds.
“All I remember seeing just after it happened was the mothers standing in the hallway crying and hovering over their babies. The moments just after just keep popping into my head.” said Revel.

Other nurses witnessed in just seconds, nurses, equipment and furniture being vacuumed down the hall and into rooms.
“I remember watching Shenita James open a door to a patient's room and suddenly being sucked into the room. I closed my eyes and prayed,” said Wiggins.

Wiggins said she wasn't the only one praying. While Wiggins was holding on for her life, the patient holding on to her around her chest was also praying out loud.

“Everyone was praying out loud' all you could hear were prayers, even, the patient holding on to me was praying aloud in Spanish,” she said.

After the tornado was over, which, according to Wiggins, happened within seconds, the patient she had instructed to come out into the hall with her had escaped witnessing her ceiling being ripped off.

“Her ceiling had been completely lifted off. You could walk into her room and see the sky,” said Wiggins.

Driver, an RN on duty at the opposite end of the hall of the OB unit, said she was warning patients to keep their babies within arms' length in the case of bad weather.
“All I knew to do was hit the floor. After it was over, all I could think about was the idea of finding someone dead,” she said.

Driver said her first thought was to check the rooms and according to her, it wasn't an easy task.

“I had to crawl over furniture which had been twisted around the rooms and shoved out into the halls. It was hard to find our way around. The halls were dark. The air smelled of fumes, of pine needles and there were wires hanging everywhere,” said Driver.

After the tornado hit, many described being in a state of disbelief.

“Like, you know what happened, but you are asking yourself, ‘What happened?' It's just hard to accept at the time. It happened so quickly and you would never believe it would happen to you,” Wiggins said.

“I realized I was wet from head to toe. There were tiny pieces of glass in my hair, and I remember wondering where the water was coming from,” Wiggins said.

“Just after it happened, I didn't know who was dead or alive and who knew or if anyone knew how we were affected. Then, the first person we saw who wasn't on our unit was Dennis Berryhill, from Environmental Services. I was so glad to see someone else. He asked how we were doing and he said he was going to check the other floors,” said Driver.
According to Driver, everything was quiet afterwards, except for the cries which their heard down the halls.

“There were mothers standing in the halls with their babies. Some of the mothers were crying and questioning what had happened. All of our patients were barefoot,” said Driver as she described gathering slippers in the darkness.
The nurses said, surprisingly, the babies didn't make a whimper, until it was past their feeding time several minutes later, prior to the total evacuation and transport to another hospital.

According to the nurses, most of the patients, their babies and what husbands were there were already in the halls when the tornado hit hard. However, there was one patient who was still in her bed and she was found with sheets of glass all around her.

“Thank God, she was not hurt. We rolled her out into the hall and removed the glass,” said Driver.

The nurses said a generator which automatically switches on when the electricity fails had engaged; however, the ceiling had been taken off the unit and there weren't any lights in the hallway but a small light at the nurses' station. The nurses said they quickly gathered all of their patients near the nurses' station and then started exiting through the stairwell; then were instructed to take their patients to the classroom located on the basement floor, then to the Information Technology (IT) Department located in the basement area also.

Once they were inside the Information Technology Department, they were informed of the hospitals air-conditioning unit being damaged by the tornado. According to the nurses, the unit had exploded on top of the roof and water was leaking through the floors. They were then moved to the Emergency Room area on first floor.
“When we left the IT department, we were standing ankle-deep in water,” said Revel.

On top of all the destruction to the interior area of the hospital, most of the staff, upon leaving, found their vehicles had been ravaged by the tornado. The nurses said the parking lot resembled a salvage yard. Cars were found flipped, smashed up against one another and trees lying, steadfastly in the midst of them.
“My car was the PT Cruiser which had a tree down the center of it, “said Revel.

Many employees were found hitching rides home.
“When I finally made it home around 2 a.m., my children were so happy to see me. They said, ‘Mama, I thought you were gone like grandma and granddaddy,'” Revel said as she explained the recent loss of her parents.
Overall, the nurses felt fortunate there weren't any serious injures to their patients, visitors or to themselves.

However, since that evening, many of the nurses have experienced the anxiety of loss and of being displaced from their OB family.

“We, the OB nurses, are like a family. We spend more of our time on the unit than we do at home and we feel like we have been separated,” said Driver.

“I know we will be together again and we will be stronger than ever,” said Wiggins with a smile.

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US Patent Numbers 7,720,998 B2, 7,836,207