Facing what could be months without a steady water supply, the only solution for Mission Hospital was to dig a well.
The Asheville, North Carolina hospital was crippled after the fast-moving Hurricane Helene dumped a record amount of rain in the region over the weekend.
“The entire water infrastructure to the area was obliterated,” said Hannah Drummond, a nurse at the hospital and the chief nurse representative for National Nurses United, the union that represents nurses at Mission Hospital.
The sewage system was so backed up after the storm, Drummond said, that it wasn’t possible to flush toilets.
“We were pooping in bags and buckets,” she said.
Access to clean water was also wiped out. Patients were showing up to the hospital drenched in flood water saturated with gasoline, chemicals and other unknown toxins.
Those people would normally be placed in a shower to clean off, Drummond said. Not so after Helene barreled through, knocking out the basics of hygiene.
“It’s been really difficult to do decontamination,” Drummond said. Her team, she said, was forced to fill trash cans with whatever clean water they could find to dump over patients in an effort to rinse them.
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“I feel like I am in the middle of living a nightmare,” she said.
At one point, Drummond said, the hospital’s emergency department was double its usual capacity, packed with 200 patients in a facility meant for 100.
Food was scarce.
“They ran out of food for us on Saturday,” Drummond said. “Patients and the staff in the ER weren’t eating.”
Food trucks have since arrived to the hospital.
On Wednesday, a Mission Hospital doctor who was not authorized to speak on behalf of the hospital system told NBC News that the company that oversees operations there, HCA Healthcare, had dug a well to supply water to the hospital.
“We had no toilets,” the doctor said. “They had to do something.”
NBC News reached out to Mission Hospital and HCA Healthcare multiple times but did not receive a response.
As of Wednesday, the doctor said, hospital toilets were working and clinicians were able to wash their hands. Water coming out of the tap, however, was not safe to drink, they said.
The number of patients in the emergency room has also fallen significantly, thanks to outside help, the doctor added.
People visiting patients at Mission Hospital seemed satisfied with the care provided.
“It’s been really excellent, considering the circumstances,” said Mark Thompson, who was visiting his mother on Wednesday. “Staff has been amazing. They didn’t have water, but they have no control over that,” he said.
Another Mission Hospital visitor who did not want to be named said the facility had people from multiple departments working together.
“If something needed to be cleaned up, they did it,” she said. “It’s definitely all-hands-on-deck and everyone was pitching in.”
