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'NO WHITE FLAG': How Pardee, and UNC Health, persevered in Helene

UNC Health Pardee President Jay Kirby and UNC Health Statewide Network President Tammy Scarborough pose with a North Carolina state flag that signifies Pardee's resilience during and after Hurricane Helene.

By Bill Moss, Published: December 28, 2024

Top administrators of UNC Health in Chapel Hill saw the forecast, like everyone else, as Hurricane Helene approached the North Carolina mountains the last week of September.

“The moment that we heard that the storm was coming, we started trying to galvanize people together to try and make sure that we had support in place for whatever was happening,” Tammy Scarborough, president of UNC Health’s Statewide Network, told the board of directors of UNC Health Pardee during its December meeting.

When the magnitude of the storm’s damage came into focus, it was obvious that UNC Health headquarters would need to send hundreds of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other support personnel to the mountains to help. “Whatever was happening” was far beyond what anyone imagined.

“We had people who had family members who were lost in the storm and could not be found,” Scarborough said. “We had a team member who had a cousin whose husband was holding on to his wife and the waters took her away, never to be found again. We had people who literally took truck rides to get to work and then walked 2 miles to be able to get there for their shift.”

While they cared for patients who were strangers, many doctors, nurses and support personnel had no idea how their own families were doing.

“We heard about people who really didn’t know what was happening to their loved ones, but yet they were committed to their hospital, to their communities and to making sure they delivered the care that they were asked to deliver on a day-to-day basis,” Scarborough said.

The Pardee Party bus

In addition to Pardee, UNC Health owns and/or manages five other hospitals impacted by the storm — in Boone, Morganton, Valdese, Lenoir and Linville. When UNC set up a process to recruit volunteers, the response was overwhelming. Physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, security personnel, chaplains and support staff stepped up.

“Over 2,000 team members across our system raised their hand and said, ‘I want to come, I want to go and help.’ We had individual hospitals in the east that were taking busloads of people and putting them on the bus and making sure that they would get to the hospital," Scarborough said. "We have one funny story. We have a hospital in Onslow and the only bus they could get was a party bus. So they piled up all of their support teams and got them on this party bus. We covered more than 550 shifts and over 6,600 hours.”

Specifically, the calvary in scrubs filled critical gaps in these ways:

• A supply chain team coordinated efforts to ensure the timely delivery of critical medical and non-medical supplies. In total, drivers logged approximately 8,000 miles over a week’s time and worked up to 18 hours each day.
• Helene knocked out power, internet and phone lines at all the western hospitals. UNC Health IT teams worked to restore communications by Sept. 28 to five hospitals and by Oct. 1 at Pardee.
• UNC activated a 24/7 nurse triage line to fill in for closed practices. “We opened up on-demand video and telephone visits for virtual care, and we made it free of charge for anyone that needed it to make sure that the cost was not an issue, that insurance was not an issue and that they had access to care,” Scarborough said.
• UNC partnered with Walmart to deliver pallets of water and ensured critical medical supplies reached the region. “I think we had over 450 tanks of oxygen that the system provided to our hospitals out in the west, because those who were on oxygen were unable to get replenishment,” she said.
• As a token of gratitude and to support families, personnel received a check. “Our foundation set up a $2½ million fund just to distribute immediate support to all of our teammates at the $1,000 level so that they could have something they could work with in the very immediate short term while they were dealing with some of these challenges,” Scarborough said.

The statewide network president titled her presentation “A Story of Two Tales: Incomprehensible Damage and Loss … and … Inspiration, Courage, Resilience and Humanity.”

On Justice Street in Hendersonville, when the rain had stopped and the winds subsided, workers lowered the North Carolina state flag that Helene’s horrific winds had shredded. The tattered banner was hung in Pardee’s incident command center when Dr. Wesley Burks, president of UNC Health, and Phil Berger, leader of the N.C. Senate, visited. Someone noticed that only the white fabric had been completely ripped away. “The symbolism reflects Pardee’s perseverance during the storm,” a hospital spokeswoman said, describing the significance. “No ‘white flag’ represents how Pardee never surrendered or waved the white flag throughout the hurricane.”