Local emergency workers responded to recent hurricanes

Local specialists in emergency medicine recently took their expertise south to care for those injured in HurricanesHarvey and Irma.

Robert Skertich and John Cunningham, both of Shaler, went to Key West, Fla., and Kate Lambert, also of Shaler, went to Dickinson, Texas, as members of the National Disaster Medical System and Disaster Medical Assistance Teams,or DMATs.

Mr. Skertich, associate professor and coordinator of the public administration program at Point Park University, flew to Orlando until the storm passed and once U.S. Highway 1 opened, went to Key West where the local hospital had been damaged and was not fully functional. They set up tents and medical equipment with the help of about 37 others from the Pittsburgh area and the Erie DMATs team, and attended to thosein need of medical care.

“The team ahead of us set up and stayed until we got there,” Mr. Skertich said. “Then it was all hands on deck.”

There were doctors, nurses, paramedics and emergency medical specialists helping in every way imaginable. Chores ranged from acute medical care to filling prescriptions at the one drug store that was open and sometimes picking up food for someone at a Wendy’s, the only other business that was open.

“I hadn’t been to Key West in 20 years,” Mr. Skertich said. “It was like a ghost town.”

Most of the patients had medical issues like diabetes or respiratory problems that got worse from having no power and running out of medications.

“A lot of what you see after a natural disaster are existing conditions getting worse and lacerations from cleanup work.”

During his years with Pittsburgh DMATs, he’s attended at disasters in many states, including after Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina.

Mr. Cunningham, director of facilities at the Eden Hall campus of Chatham University, is a volunteer paramedic with Shaler Emergency Medical Services. Like Mr. Skertich, he’s been a volunteer at Shaler’s Elfinwild Volunteer Fire Department and the EMS since the 1980s.

He said his grandfather was a city firefighter and that inspired him to do the same inhis own community.

“It was an opportunity to do more to help more people,” he said.

When disasters strike an area, he said, it completely overwhelms local and state emergency services and pulls at federal programs as well. That’s why the National Disaster Medical System was formed.

After 9/11, DMATs were formalized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and became part of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department under the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We all have real jobs,” Mr. Cunningham said. Like his neighbor and co-volunteer in Shaler, Mr. Skertich, he said, “my job allows me to work for the federal government when disasters strike.”

Once the Pittsburgh DMATs got to Key West and set up their field hospital, “they came to us,” Mr. Cunningham said. “There was so much infrastructure damage and people were left without any medical care whatsoever. The community hospitalwas barely operational.”

He said providing medical services to those in need during emergencies is a very rewarding experience.

“Working with patients and helping people when they’re having the worst experience of their life is something I’ve been doing and plan tocontinue for a long time.”

In suburban Houston, Ms. Lambert and her DMATs team set up a field hospital in the gynmasium of Dickinson High School. They saw 650 patients, most of whom where suffering respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses from exposure to flood waters or who had run out of prescriptions or been injured.

Ms. Lambert is a 2002 graduate of Fox Chapel Area High School, a Point Park alumna and works as the pre-hospital coordinator for Allegheny Health Network’s West Penn Hospital. She also is a paramedic for West Deer EMS and Parkview Volunteer Fire Department and EMS in O’Hara. Mr. Skertich was one of her professors at Point Park.

After two weeks of attending to patients at the high school, which was surrounded by mountains of debris, Ms. Lambert said she never forgot they were people whohad just been through the worst experience of their lives.

“Disaster medicine is more difficult than what we do locally,” she said. “Most of the people we cared for in Texas were acutely affected by the hurricane. They had lost homesand had nothing left.

“I started to tear up and cry because I was going home to a comfortable bed and for them it had just started. They didn’t have a warm bed to go home to. Their journey was just beginning.”