Hospitals in Hurricane Irene's Path Enact Safety Plans

Aug. 26, 2011— -- New York University Langone Medical Center, the Manhattan VA Hospital and Staten Island University Hospitals began to evacuate patients Friday afternoon in response to the encroaching danger posed by Hurricane Irene.

"In my career, I've never been in a situation where they said we're emptying the hospital," said Dr. James Speyer, medical director of the clinical cancer center at NYU Langone Medical Center. He said he never imagined that he'd be in the same situation as doctors in New Orleans, who had to evacuate hospitals in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Speyer said he was making arrangements to transfer cancer patients to other medical centers on higher ground. Some colleagues had made arrangements to move particular patients to medical centers in neighboring New Jersey.

The three New York City hospital evacuations are the latest evidence that hospitals in the path of Hurricane Irene are preparing for the worst as the whirlwind heads north. The greater New York area should begin to feel Irene's blast late Saturday night and Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.

ABC News contacted other medical facilities up and down the coast in Irene's course to get their take on this weekend's safety plan.

"All acute inpatient facilities need to have disaster preparedness committees, and we routinely practice for these kinds of scenarios," said Dr. Michael Lucchesi, chief of emergency medicine at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. "Some hospitals are better at disaster preparedness than others, but all have a plan."

"We've closed shutters, put boards over windows [and] we'll be sandbagging the doors later today," said Jarie Ebert, spokeswoman for North Carolina's Outer Banks Hospital, which is less than half a mile from the coast and a mere 14 feet above sea level. Hurricane Irene will make its first U.S. stop near the shores of North Carolina Saturday morning, according to the National Weather Service.