On my first day at SunBridge Care and Rehabilitation for Asheboro (N.C.), the power was already out by the time I had arrived. We don’t get a lot of winter weather in North Carolina, but the night before we were hit with a 100-year ice storm. The federal government declared the state a disaster area, but we knew that already!
      I’ll never forget my first round of the facility and meeting my staff. The CNAs and nurses were working double-time to keep our 120 skilled nursing residents warm and comfortable. Kitchen staff were cooking and serving by flashlight. One of the resident halls was not functioning on the generator, so we dug out the emergency preparedness manual and started a temperature log. We found some space heaters at a hardware store and took our laundry to the laundromat. We called the local emergency services, just to let them know we might need some help. We never imagined our power would be out for more than three days.
      After a very long first day of work, I left the facility to find some dinner for the staff. I got no answer when I called the facility, so I returned and found that the telephones were down. For the duration of our crisis, we had no overhead pager and only one cordless phone to contact the outside world.
      Later that night, the generator started to fail. Power came on for a few moments, then the facility blacked out. After a couple of hours, we began to feel like we were in a nightclub with a strobe light. We made a list of our critically ill residents and called emergency services to apprise them of our worsening situation. They provided us with supplies throughout our ordeal but told us they would not evacuate the facility under any circumstances. We were truly on our own.
      We kept everything patched together until the middle of the following night, when the generator made a sound like an explosion and everything went black. We were left with a few flashlights and a lot of prayer. The darkness and quiet was incredible -- you don’t realize how comforting the steady hum of electricity sounds until it falls silent.
      Our situation grew worse. It was so cold outside that the sprinkler system pipes in the ceiling burst. For six hours in the middle of the night, we took care of residents in the dark and cold, while it “rained” inside the facility. The kitchen flooded completely. The Red Cross brought breakfast for our residents. We were never so happy to see the dawn!
      The facility got very cold, so a sister facility brought some kerosene heaters. This created another predicament: We had no fire alarm system, no sprinklers and four open flames in the facility. The fire department told us to do whatever we had to do. We knew we had to work together to keep our residents safe and warm. We got volunteer help from the local Jaycees as well as staff and residents’ families. Our CSC, business office consultant and regional manager all stopped by to check on us. They were enormously helpful to this young and new administrator.
      When the power finally came back on at 6 p.m. Saturday evening, everyone cheered! Slowly, over the next few days, we worked hard to put everything back to normal.
      I have never been happier to work for a company than I am with SunBridge. And I have never been more proud of a group of people than I was of my staff during the storm. Everyone worked long and hard with a single purpose: to give the best care we could to our very deserving residents during an awfully tough time.
      The team-building and community relationships we established during my 60-hour “first day” at work has held us in good stead during the routinely challenging business of running a nursing home. Despite my initiation by ice, I expect to be with this building for many years to come, and I look forward to each new day with my team.