A total dollar assessment of the damages caused when a tornado hit the campus of Atrium Health Navicent Baldwin hospital in Milledgeville earlier this year is still not yet completed, a hospital official says.
“The primary focus, really, since the March 26 tornado has been mitigating the numerous impacts we had from the tornado,” said Paul Barkley, chief operating officer at the local hospital.
Barkley’s comments were made during the Atrium Health Navicent Baldwin Board of Directors’ quarterly meeting.
“In the last quarterly meeting, we discussed that really every portion of the roof on every building on campus was impacted, and so in the following days we had different contractors and experts in doing assessments,” Barkley said.
Hospital officials are also steadily involved in working with representatives of the insurance team that provides insurance coverage for the hospital, he added.
“Essentially, over the last several months that’s been the nature of what we’ve been working with and getting all of the approvals in place, and often that also includes all of the engineering work that has to be done,” Barkley told hospital board members. “But essentially, where we’re at is all the roofs on Park Tower will have to be replaced in full.”
Barkley said since rain remains an issue, Park Tower has undergone partial closings and openings since the tornado.
“But this last series of rain events (got) to a point where we could not continue to open and close portions of beds,” Barkley said. “At different points over the last 3 ½ months, we’ve had up to 60% of our beds closed.”
He said every time it rains, he and other officials realize there will be a leak somewhere.
“We’ve gone through and had to mitigate those on a daily basis with that weather,” Barkley said. “It’s been manageable in the sense that we are addressing it, but in terms of the permanence of the repairs, they are not up to the standards to keep the water out.”
Presently, 25 to 30% of the hospital’s patient occupancy is impacted, he said.
Barkley noted that despite the hospital being without that many beds for a period, they remain on target with last year, which he said was “a complete testament of the work that the nursing team has done and the support of operations people making that happen.”
He said a lot of hard work had gone into making that happen.
“I’m very proud of the work that the team has done,” Barkley said.
The hospital has contracted with Skyline Construction Services Inc., of Eatonton, to do the roofing repairs on the hospital buildings.
“They’ve been out here constantly over the past three months,” Barkley said.
Engineering work has already been approved by the hospital’s insurance company.
And contractors who have won the bids to do the repair work are currently finalizing contracts with sub-contractors.
Barkley predicted such a process would take between three and four weeks.
“We’re hoping to have that initiated by the end of this month or by the first of August at the latest,” he said. “That is Phase I and it will cover this building and essentially cover 85 percent of our primary problems.”