One of the most heroic images coming out of Monday night's horrific surge was an ABC News shot of an NYU Langone Medical Center NICU nurse manually pumping air into an infant's lungs while the hospital was being evacuated. The nurse, Margot Condon, spoke with CNN's Anderson Cooper this week about the ordeal, explaining that after the hospital's backup generators failed, the nurses successfully moved 20 babies down nine flights of stairs in the dark, all the while monitoring them and manually breathing for them.
At least six workers were needed to take each infant out of the hospital. "Normally babies that tiny are not held unless the mother's holding them," Condon said. "We had to be sure the baby was safe and warm, because they all lose heat a lot, they all had central lines so somebody had to be holding the lines. They all had monitors, because you couldn't really see them all that well, so somebody was holding the monitor and somebody was holding the oxygen line, and we were bagging baby." The baby Condon saved Monday night was only eight hours old, and its mother was still hospitalized during the evacuation.
Condon said this was the most dramatic experience she'd had in her 36 years as a nurse. NYU Hospital evacuated about 300 patients Monday night and Tuesday, and is set to begin reopening next week.
