The Little Known Miracle of Downtown Hospital

Downtown Hospital Today

On 9-11, I remember watching live local news coverage with a television reporter parked out in front of St. Vincent's Hospital, where a small army of volunteer doctors, nurses. EMTs, etc were waiting for the expected onslaught of wounded to pour in from downtown. And then...nobody came. The impression you got was that, aside from the over 2,600 dead at the World Trade Center, most everyone else escaped with minor injuries.

The story that later emerged was quite different. It turns out that hundreds of injured people had been rushed to another local hospital, one much closer to Ground Zero. It's a tiny hospital which most of us, including most New Yorkers have never even heard of: NY Downtown Hospital. This little outpost in lower Manhattan had been created out of the merger of several other small hospitals as a response to the Wall Street anarchist bombing of 1920. On 9-11, the little hospital received an influx of patients greater than any American hospital in history: 350 patients in the first two hours, 1,500 total. Burns, broken bones, lacerations, and lots and lots of eye injuries and breathing problems from the dust. Furthermore, they dealt with all of this with a tiny staff of 10 emergency room doctors.

I watched a terrific show on the Discovery Fit and Health network the other day that told (among many other amazing stories) the miraculous treatment of American Express employee Debbie Mardenfeld (initially known as Jane Doe #1 because she'd been brought to the emergency room without an I.D.). One of the first victims to be brought in, she'd been nearly cut in two by part of the landing gear from one of the planes when it fell on her. The only doctors on duty (or available) that day were a plastic surgeon and a hand specialist. They not only saved the woman, but they restored her legs -- and with a blackout interruption in the middle of the 12-hour surgery. (Their names are Dr. Gerald Ginsberg and Dr. Nelson Potwinick). The woman not only lived, but she lived to dance at her wedding. 

Another amazing story: a woman had broken several ribs when the elevator she was riding in fell a couple of stories to the ground, its cables cut by one of the planes as it plowed through the building. She had just been put into an ambulance at one of the triage centers when the South Tower fell. She survived the collapse, but it was now impossible to drive the ambulance out. So she walked the six blocks or so over to Downtown Hospital, broken bones and all. (I retraced her steps a few days ago, and took the photo above. You have to admire her feat. The hospital is close to South Street Seaport).

A few months ago, Downtown Hospital was in serious financial trouble. They'd expanded services in the wake of 9-11, and doubled in size, but couldn't handle the expansion. Fortunately, unlike St. Vincent's before it, which went unrescued, Downtown was bailed out by NY Presbyterian and is now part of its constellation of medical centers. But...can you imagine? If it had folded, there would be NO hospital south of 14th Street. To say it has proved its worth is putting it mildly. If we let hospitals fail, where do we go when we need them -- the M &Ms store?