FAYETTEVILLE –Bladen County Hospital was just minutes from closing its Emergency Department when Publix stepped in to save the day with a working generator.
During Hurricane Matthew Bladen County Hospital had trouble with its generator. Not wanting to have problems again, they rented one from a company in Indiana prior to Hurricane Florence. When the power cut off, they employed the rented generator. After about five hours, it quit working.
Tommy Lindsey of the Bladen County Hospital maintenance department hooked up the old generator. That generator worked for about five hours. He then called in Elizabethtown residents Daine Smith of Cape Fear Heating and Cooling and Powell Cross of Watson Electrical. They couldn’t get either generator working.
Watson Electrical does the generator hook-ups for Publix stores so Cross knew the Publix store in Fayetteville had a generator. He put Dr. Roxie Wells, President of Bladen County Hospital, in touch with Publix.
Maria Butters at Publix headquarters in Florida got right to work securing an 18-wheel tractor-trailer and driver to transport the store’s generator to Bladen County Hospital in Elizabethtown. Publix also sent a fuel truck and a generator technician to the hospital.
“We were just minutes from shutting the Emergency Department down,” said Dr. Wells, “when Publix stepped in and saved the day. Without a functioning Emergency Department, Bladen County EMS would have had to transport patients to other counties for treatment, putting their ambulances out of service for extended periods of time.”
The story doesn’t end here, however. Today they are sending someone back to Elizabethtown to adjust the setting on the generator so that the hospital has air conditioning as well as power.