Because of the damages caused by Hurricane Gustav and the power outages hundreds of hospital patients could be transported out of the hospitals together with the medical facilities. Officials fear that the patients can’t survive without air conditioning.

The patients were seriously ill and a few of them came from burn units, as Alan Levine, the state’s secretary of Health and Hospitals, reported for the Associated Press. By Tuesday none of the patients evacuated had died. Nearly 140 sick people were transferred, but the number will grow during the next days.
Levine added that their “goal throughout this has been to minimize the loss of life and to protect our folks." Since Hurricane Gustav passed through the South nearly 1.4 million power outages have been reported.

Almost 700 patients in Louisiana hospitals need to be evacuated in the next three days because the buildings lack in air conditioning. Besides these patients, nearly seven nursing homes were to be evacuated, but generators arrived later in the day, and the homes went on with their job, allowing the patients remain where they were.

85 degrees in the area of New Orleans and 82% humidity changed the plans of the authorities, who had decided before the storm not to move any of the patient from hospital, as their state could have got worse.

About 10,000 people were evacuated before Hurricane Gustav hit the Gulf Coast. During the pre-storm evacuations from hospitals and nursing homes, six people who were in a critical condition died while they were transferred.