Hospital operator HCA Inc. Saturday said its Houston and Louisiana hospitals sustained “very little damage” as a result of Hurricane Rita.
The company said it had evacuated four hospitals in the Houston area ahead of Rita but said all were in good shape and would be reopened within days.
Hospitals in the cities of New Iberia and Lafayette, Louisiana did not close during the storm.
In the last few days many feared that Rita would be as ferocious as Hurricane Katrina, which devastated parts of Louisiana and Mississippi last month and killed more than 1,000 people. But Rita weakened in the hours before it made landfall, sparing Texas and southwest Louisiana similar damage.
Hospitals in the New Orleans area suffered especially during Katrina, with doctors and patients trapped for days after the storm with no power, little security and dwindling supplies of medicines.
