>>> moore, oklahoma. i am joined by nick and shannon . they were both on duty at the hospital here in moore and had to help move patients to safety as the tornado approached. shannon , i imagine it was a lot of feelings of helplessness when a tornado is approaching. who could feel more helpless than patients in hospital beds that can't do anything for themselves. what did you have to do?
>> you know, that was our job that day was to make sure the patients felt safe and the staff felt safe, so we were confident in what we were doing. we knew we needed to take care of them to protect them and ourselves, and we just did what we needed to do.
>> nick, did the patients know how serious the threat was as it was approaching?
>> i have a feeling most patients knew it was serious. we try to be careful, not scare anybody, let them know it is a serious situation, need to get everybody safe. you know, everybody was calm, patients, community members showed up to seek shelter were calm, we were able to move everybody quickly and efficiently.
>> so the hospital was shelter for people in the area that decided that would be the place they wanted to be?
>> yes. we had a lot of community members show up at the hospital seeking shelter minutes before the tornado hit and we had folks posted in different positions by entrances, kind of funneling them forward to safe areas of the hospital.
>> what are the safe areas. where did you move the patients to?
>> my patients were initially on second floor, and what we normally do in that situation is move them to the hallway and close the windows and doors away from windows and doors. we knew that we were probably going to get hit. we made the decision to move them downstairs into an interior part of the building in the emergency department where nick's patients were.
>> what about patients that need the most treatment, patients who are in intensive care . what do you do with them?
>> what we basically do, try to do, make sure we knew which were the most serious, kept track of patients in the hospital at the time, then when it is time to evacuate, arrange in an order to be transported out first. within getting patients out of the building, across to the warren theater, and making sure everybody was safe, i believe the first patient left probably within three to four minutes, us getting out of the building to the warren theater.
>> how many patients did you have to evacuate?
>> there were 30 patients in the building at the time, 9 were shannon 's patients. had four more ob patients, labor and delivery, and also had four patients, outpatients getting lab tests and other things.
>> patients and personnel, were they all out by the time the tornado hit?
>> we did a really great job of identifying a quick exit. we had enough personnel to help move patients out. we had some obstacles getting out of the building, but we were able to make it out and across the street, and we got everybody out safely.
>> they would not have survived if you hadn't gotten them out of there, looks like a total disaster area .
>> yeah, we moved everybody that was in the building was in the center most part of the building. we saw surprisingly few injuries. knicks, bruises, scrapes, a few cuts here and there. everybody inside that building, we were thinking there were 250 to 300 in the building at the time, and everybody was safe, as safe as they could possibly be.
>> nick, shannon , thank you for joining me. thank you for the work yesterday saving lives. really appreciate it.
>> thank you.
>> joining me by phone, the mayor of moore , glenn lewis . mr. mayor, thank you very much for joining us again tonight.
>> thank you, appreciate you guys getting our story out.
>> and mr. mayor, what does moore need most now?
>> right now we actually need people to get out of the way. we've got so many people coming from out of town to look at it that they're hampering our recovery efforts at this point.
>> and in terms of help from the state or federal assistance , are you getting everything you need?
>> absolutely. i got a call from president obama , he's offered all the resources that we can use, anything we need basically is what he told us. the fema director himself came into the city this morning, bright and early. they have over 200 boots on the ground now. the governor has been here the whole time, she just went home. she was here last night. i mean, she has been phenomenal to work with. everyone tried to help their best. appreciate all of the help.
>> governor, i had a conference with the governor here in this location before the show, i asked her when she thought she might get to sleep. she seems to have no idea. mr. mayor, i am wondering about the opportunity comfortable the community -- for the community when they feel not safe in their homes. has moore as a community figured plans for that before situations like this?
>> well actually most of the people have safe rooms. a lot of the older areas do not have safe rooms. all the new houses, they basically, every one of them has a new safe room in it, so it is just the older part of town, a lot of which was hit. most people either have a safe room or storm shelter. we were very fortunate. we had 12 minutes of warning on this. a lot of people -- our city about 50,000 population. we had unfortunately 19 deaths, oklahoma city area had five. we are doing as good as we can right now.
>> mayor lewis, can you take us through what happened today on what turned out to be the very good news that there were many fewer lives lost in this tornado than we thought 24 hours ago. how did that news unfold for you?
>> i was actually walking through the neighborhood over there i believe with the governor when the news first came to us from the medical examiner's office from the state. it was quite surprising because we had been told all the time it was 51. and we're not sure where that number came from. the official report was 19, 24 total, but we were fortunate. still at the same time that's a lot of people that were killed in this tornado.
>> it really is a horrible loss. mayor glenn lewis , thank you very much for joining us tonight.
>> thank you, sir, appreciate it.
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