+ SOMEONE You Should Know
In the Eye of the Storm
Two local medical professionals helped individuals in
St. Maarten weather Hurricane Irma by creating a
makeshift clinic during the storm.
As Hurricane Irma churned
toward the Caribbean in September
2017, Dr. Andrew
Pleener and his wife, Dr. Olga Aleksandrova,
were preparing for a vacation
to St. Maarten. With the worst of
the storm forecast to miss the island,
the Windermere couple moved forward
with their travel plans. The unpredictability
of the storm reared its
head once they arrived.
“As it went from a category 2 to a
category 3, it started to shift a little bit
in our direction,” Pleener remembers.
“Then they announced it was coming
right for St. Maarten.”
At that point, there were no
flights home. While they felt safe in
their condo, which was built with
solid concrete and hurricane-proof
glass, they decided to take shelter at
the American University of the Caribbean
with residents and visitors from
the surrounding cities.
24 Central Florida Lifestyle | September 2019
The university had completed
construction on a new building with a
mock lab for its medical students about
a year or two before Hurricane Irma hit.
Using those resources, including emergency
room beds and medical tables,
the couple worked with others to set
up a makeshift clinic to treat anything
from lacerations and panic attacks to
COPD exacerbations.
Along with Pleener, a psychiatrist,
and Aleksandrova, an internist, two
other doctors took shelter inside the
university. One was a plastic surgeon,
who was there for his daughter’s white
coat ceremony, and the other was a university
professor, who had just retired
as an OB/GYN. With a team of about
50 people, including first through fifth
semester medical students, the group
of four doctors set up a triage area on
the first floor of the building where
they could treat minor issues or admit
patients with more severe medical concerns
to the ER upstairs.
Initially, all they had was basic
first aid supplies and medication
donations from others at the shelter.
Pharmacies eventually started
donating medications in exchange
for having a safe place with a generator
to store them.
The group saw hundreds of patients
both during and after the storm.
The government on St. Maarten even
listed their clinic as the go-to resource
due to the devastation that had occurred
to area hospitals.
“We didn’t have all the tools, but
we had a lot of heart, a lot of volunteers
and a lot of people that were willing
to help,” Pleener says. “Everyone
coming together is what made this
work.”
It turns out the decision to stay
at the university was a lucky one not
only for their patients but also for
Pleener and Aleksandrova. When
they returned to their condo, the front
door was blown out, their refrigerator
was outside and the whole condo was
flooded.
For their efforts, they were invited
back to the university when it
re-opened five months later to speak
at the white coat ceremony. There are
even posters of them hanging on the
walls of the building, where a disaster
medicine fellowship program developed
by the Harvard School of Medicine
will be based in the future.
“It definitely made me appreciate
the resilience people have,” Pleener
says. “When everybody comes together
you can accomplish a lot.”
PHOTOS COURTESY OF DR. ANDREW PLEENER
By Lyndsay Fogarty