Lone Star Ambulance

Lone Star Ambulance was a Texas provider whose fleet was arranged to transport patients during the evacuation crisis at Memorial. Its planned role connected hospitals evacuating patients by boat or aircraft with onward ambulance transport, but the company could not obtain permission for its vehicles to enter the city.

Contract and Evacuation Role

LifeCare had a contract with Lone Star Ambulance, and Robbye Dubois engaged a fleet from the company to pick up patients being flown or boated out of Memorial and a LifeCare hospital near the New Orleans airport. That second hospital was not flooded, though it was experiencing power problems. The arrangement was intended to support patient transfers from both facilities.

Access Constraints and Stranded Patients

Dubois sought permission for the ambulances to travel into New Orleans but did not receive it. She advised LifeCare staff at Memorial to send patients using whatever transportation officials arranged. Late that day, she learned that four LifeCare patients and seven LifeCare staff members from Memorial were stranded at the corner of Napoleon and St. Charles Streets. In the evening, she made calls to seek help for them from the Coast Guard and Knox Andress, whom she still believed worked for FEMA. The episode shows the gap between arranging vehicles and securing authorization and coordination to move them into the city.