Tulane University Hospital

Tulane University Hospital was one of the New Orleans hospitals caught in the improvised evacuation effort during Hurricane Katrina. Its parent company began hiring helicopters after it became clear that the city was flooding, while the hospital later served as a destination for an ambulance coordinator and medical equipment. The distinction matters: the helicopter that reached Tulane in the late-night episode carried no patients, even as hospitals across the city still faced the challenge of moving people to safety.

Helicopters and the Evacuation Effort

As flooding became apparent on Tuesday morning, Tulane University Hospital’s parent company began hiring helicopters to assist with the hospital’s evacuation. The decision was described to Memorial executive Bob Smith by a representative of another medical organization, prompting Smith to contact Tulane’s parent company for advice about arranging an airlift.

The response underscored how difficult it was to translate an urgent need into transport. Executives wished Smith luck and explained that contracting with privately owned helicopters and bringing them into the disaster zone had taken time; communications problems in New Orleans had made the process harder. Their account offered practical warning as Memorial tried to organize its own evacuation, rather than a ready-made solution.

A Destination, but Not for Patients

Late one night, after an earlier Coast Guard call had left Memorial’s command staff with the impression that pilots could take patients to any hospital willing to accept them, a Coast Guard helicopter arrived at Memorial. Its crew had been directed there by a search-and-rescue request relayed from an aircraft overhead, and its mission was to begin evacuating the patients who remained.

The helicopter departed for Tulane University Hospital with an Acadian Ambulance coordinator and about a thousand pounds of medical equipment gathered from private helicopters during the day. It carried no patients. The account therefore places Tulane within the region’s emergency transport network while making clear that this particular flight transferred a coordinator and equipment, not hospital patients.

The Limits of Coordination

The episode unfolded amid a shortage of medical transport helicopters and competing evacuation needs across New Orleans. A long-distance flight to a hospital outside the city could keep an aircraft unavailable for hours; some pilots instead favored quick trips to a highway interchange, where patients might be handed off for further care. The proposed staging sites had been discussed in the Hurricane Pam exercise, but a system to supply them and move patients onward had not yet been worked out.

Tulane’s helicopter arrangements and its place as a destination thus belonged to a fragmented response, not a fully coordinated regional plan. Even when a hospital could accept a flight, the available aircraft, communications, and onward transport shaped what that connection could accomplish. The episode’s sharply limited outcome—a flight that reached Tulane with equipment and a coordinator, but without patients—makes those constraints concrete.

Place in the Book’s Wider Comparison

The book sets individual hospital decisions within a citywide emergency marked by delayed evacuation, inadequate transport, and failures of coordination among agencies and institutions. Tulane’s parent company’s effort to secure helicopters shows one attempt to mobilize private transport as the flooding became clear; the account of the later flight shows how rescue operations could still produce movement without moving patients.

Tulane University Hospital is not presented here through a detailed account of its internal care or final evacuation results. Its documented role is narrower but revealing: it was part of the network of hospitals seeking air support and a receiving destination for personnel and medical equipment, while the larger system struggled to connect aircraft, hospitals, and patients.