How Hospitals Combat Disaster

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How Hospitals Combat Disaster
When terrible disasters affect populous urban
areas, injuries and unsafe home conditions leave
most people with only one place to turn
their local hospital. Hospitals already
provide an incredible community service,
providing professional healthcare to their
communities and supporting a higher quality of
life. When disaster strikes, be it a power
outage, flood, fire, or natural disaster like a
hurricane, hospitals act as safe havens for
individuals who cannot escape and cannot go back
to their place of residence. In at-risk locations
like Fort Lauderdale, which has an annual
hurricane season and was affected by both
hurricane Katrina and hurricane Wilma, the
construction of a new hospital requires a set of
special codes and careful attention so as to make
sure that, in troubling times, the building and
its staff may offer relief and refuge. Specific
Facilities to Combat Disaster In Fort Lauderdale,
which covers most of Broward County and has over
six million residents, the resident and tourist
population must deal with regular tropical
storms, which can cause power outages and
potentially turn into hurricanes. The city is a
high-risk area, and in times of disaster and
related injury, residents and tourists alike may
look to the nearest hospital for support. In
order to cope with this kind of environment,
hospitals in Fort Lauderdale must follow specific
codes that call for unique functions and
capacities that one would not generally
consider necessary for a hospital to have.
Facilities like holding areas for mass amounts of
people and a command room to coordinate relief
are a must. They need to be able to
store extra food, trauma supplies and
communication equipment. All of these things need
to be kept somewhere accessible and safe from the
effects of disasters. In order to achieve this,
hospitals must be constructed as solidly inside
and out, and they must have easily understandable
and navigable floor plans. How Hospital Design
Combats Disaster Additionally, hospitals have to
be able to withstand the disaster itself so that
individuals seeking refuge are not at risk while
inside. When constructing a hospital, the backup
generator location, flood resistance, and
facility window glazing must all be considered as
part of a holistic approach to increasing the
building resilience against disaster. In Fort
Lauderdale, where flooding may affect residence,
second floor generators capable of running
for multiple days are very useful basic
measures. More resilient roofing that has been
subjected to pull tests to confirm its strength
are also necessary, especially when faced with
high winds. While retrofitting older hospitals
certainly makes them more resilient,
constructing new hospitals that incorporate
these features in their design gives the best
result, and in Fort Lauderdale, new hospitals
with such capacities will be highly valuable to
their communities.
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At the end of the day, hospitals are there to
provide their communities with invaluable
healthcare service. For those living in areas
that face disasters, especially seasonally like
in Fort Lauderdale, it should be comforting to
know that their hospitals are just as capable of
providing sufficient relief during hard times so
that everyone who needs it will be given refuge
and safety.
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