On March 1, 2007, an EF3 tornado with wind speeds of 150 mph ripped through Americus, Georgia, a town of 17,000 people about 150 miles south of Atlanta. Little was able to avoid the wrath of this natural disaster, killing two people, destroying hundreds of homes and businesses. The community was left devastated.
The people of Americus were in desperate need of healthcare facility. Their place for healing was gone, and the closest hospital was 50 miles away. The major challenge was to tackle the challenge of building a full-service hospital in a natural disaster zone and in significantly less time than a structure of comparable size and service.
A full-service, 72-bed hospital was designed and constructed using 354 COGIM modules. The facility included four operating rooms, labor and delivery rooms, a nursery, emergency department, intensive care unit, diagnostic imaging facility, private patient rooms, and mechanical and food service departments.
While modular in approach, it was critical for the design of the interim hospital to not only look like, but also function as well as any permanent hospital, both inside and out. Once inside the interim facility, the modular units transform into a seamless healthcare facility, providing exceptional spaces that support the more exceptional medical care.
The facility was completed in December of 2007, only 10 months after the destruction of the hospital. The interim hospital was certified by the state of Georgia and began accepting patients on April 1, 2008.
With the completion of a permanent facility, the the project was decommissioned and dis-assembled and the COGIM units returned to the Department of Defense and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
