Thousands of calls being re-routed
The St. Charles Community Health Center is hoping that lightning doesn’t strike twice after a thunderstorm last week crippled operations and forced the center to re-route calls to Kenner.
“Our phones went dead after being struck by lightning during a really bad storm last week,” Julia Bodden, the center’s community outreach coordinator, said. “We didn’t realize how bad the problem was at first, but we started hearing that patients couldn’t schedule appointments – they were just getting a busy signal.”
Once the full effect of the lightning strike was realized, the center sent some personnel to Kenner, and re-routed most calls there.
“We typically get about 2,500 calls a day at our Luling clinic, so the Kenner center is having to handle a lot of calls right now,” Bodden said. “We also have people in different areas who are responsible for receiving faxes, and they have to call us on cell phones if anything important comes in.”
And that will continue for almost two weeks.
The center will have to replace their entire phone system and it will take a week before all the equipment comes in. After that, it will take another week to install.
“I don’t think that anyone realized that a lightning strike could cripple our organization like it has,” Bodden said. “We are working everything out, and now we have an emergency plan in place in case something like this happens again.”
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