On a seemingly splendid late spring day, Effingham Hospital and Care Center made its preparations for a hurricane.

The hospital carried a hurricane evacuation drill, simulating what it would take and how it would transport its care center residents out of harm’s way.

“We have plans for nearly every contingency,” said Vicky Little, the hospital’s human resources director and emergency liaison.

While the care center makes plans to take its residents, it also packs up a four-day supply of food. There’s also bedding, medicines, sheets, air mattresses and extra oxygen to take, enough to fill a tractor-trailer.

“We have to be self-sufficient,” said Little. “We’re required to take a three- to four-day supply of food.”

Some of the vendors, who supply the hospital and care center with material from linens to oxygen, also will be on site to support the relocation effort.

In case the hospital did have to pack up its care center residents because of an oncoming hurricane, the destination is the Bernie Ward Community Center in Augusta. That’s where they went in 1999 when Hurricane Floyd’s approach of the Eastern Seaboard prompted a massive evacuation. Back then, it took more than six hours to make the trek.

Now, the hospital can call upon air-conditioned buses provided by the school system to take their residents to Augusta. The school system also has committed to provide drivers, and the hospital also has employees who have their CDLs, Little said.

The hospital has a hazardous vulnerability analysis it updates every year, said Michael Murphy, the hospital’s environment of care manager. It also works with the health department and emergency services agencies to make sure its plan is coordinated.

For Thursday’s exercise, the care center residents went about a normal day. The hospital used 30 students from Effingham County High School as stand-ins, going so far as to put them in gurneys and wheelchairs to simulate loading patients onto a bus. The hospital had three buses in use for the exercise, and an actual evacuation could take up to nine buses for the 105 care center residents.

“We wanted to practice that loading procedure,” Murphy said.

They also have to have supplies for the staff who would be with the care center patients, and they also will have nutritious snacks for those on the buses for the ride to the evacuation center.

Murphy also posted the evacuation drill on Live Process and Georgia Safe Net to let other hospitals and public safety agencies know what they were doing.

“We are alerting everyone across the state we are doing this drill,” he said.