Med Center Bent, But Didn't Break

The Hancock Medical Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss. is a mile inland. Still, Hurricane Katrina left it a mess.

As CBS News correspondent and The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith reports, the once-spotless operating room is covered in slop, as is much of the rest of the building.

But they're still open for business.

"People were cutting themselves while the water was three, four feet deep," Dr. Sean Appleyard tells Smith. "They were cut by debris they were trying to swim through; trying to escape through attics when they got trapped in houses that were, essentially, submerged by what, essentially, was a tidal wave that that hit this area."

When Katrina hit, the hospital staff performed heroically, Smith says.

"Water was rising in the hospital. Three feet within 20 minutes," he says. "And rushing to get patients from the first floor up to the second floor, with the elevators stalling, the generator bailing, was a nightmare; and doing all this in the dark because, once all the power was out, all the hallways were just pitch-black."

Nurse Michaeline Smyth says, "The windows held pretty well. They just leaked around. Then the water started rushing in through the doors. We thought the windows were gonna break.

"We saw fish. We saw snakes, turtles floating by right outside the windows while we were trying to get the patients up. We got up to the second floor and (the water) got up to the awnings of the second floor. And we didn't know if it was going to stop or not."

All day long on Wednesday, the hospital's patients were evacuated to other locations, because Hancock, in its current state, can't stay open much longer.

Katrina threw everything she could at the Hancock staff, but she didn't win.

"We have our lives," Smyth says, "and I have the lives of all my friends here, and we saved all the patients, and I couldn't be any prouder."

Smith says some of the Hancock staffers have been working non-stop since Sunday. One even gave his shoes to a woman who walked to the facility in her bare feet with nothing but the clothes on her back.