Mobile IV hydration company treated 250+ first responders, volunteers after Kerrville floods
AUSTIN (KXAN) -- For almost a month, countless volunteers and first responders have lent helping hands to those impacted by devastating floods that hit Central Texas over the July 4 weekend.
In return, a mobile IV hydration company stepped up to offer help to those who were helping others.
Lone Star IV Medics spent about two weeks stationed in the Hill Country, administering IV vitamins and medications for free to volunteers and first responders assisting with flood recovery.
Pam McLeod, the president of Lone Star IV Medics, said she and her team didn't anticipate the number of people who would need their help, and they started running out of supplies quickly.
That's where Lone Star IV Medics' partner Olympia Pharmaceuticals came in.
McLeod said she reached out to a representative with Olympia, which is an FDA-registered 503B outsourcing facility and 503A compounding pharmacy, according to its website. That means it's authorized to compound and distribute patient-specific prescriptions as well as manufacture large batches of a product that can also be sold to healthcare facilities.
Olympia responded quickly and provided Lone Star IV with IV fluids and vitamins at an immense discount, McLeod said. That allowed Lone Star to treat more than 250 people throughout the two weeks they were at recovery sites in the Hill Country. McLeod said those types of treatments, which primarily help with hydration, are imperative to people who are spending a lot of time outdoors or doing manual labor.
"We think about water and electrolytes... There's only so much you can do with oral hydration," McLeod said. She gave some examples of the types of workers Lone Star IV treated during the flood recovery efforts.
"People who are working... divers, you're in the water, but you're sweating and you're not taking the time to eat and just settle down and take a rest," McLeod said. "The cadaver dog handlers, they were drudging through thick mud, heat, and bugs and humidity."
"People working heavy machinery, they are out there for hours just pushing harder and harder to help and find the victims that were out there. Because of the heat and the humidity, and all the water that was there, dehydration sets in pretty quickly," McLeod explained.
She said those types of efforts can lead to a dangerous level of dehydration if not treated. "So we were able to help before they needed to get pulled off the site."
"When we came in, we were able to really, really help with just simple IV fluids and a couple different vitamins that can just -- help you feel a little bit better to keep pushing further," McLeod explained. "That's really what Olympia did, was give us those few crucial vitamins that we needed to add to our fluids that were just able to help people go a little bit longer."
McLeod, who has a background in nursing, said Lone Star IV has a full medical team that screens each patient before any of its paramedics or nurses treat them. She said what her team saw in Kerrville was dehydration and heat-related illnesses or injuries, which can be "disastrous" and cause volunteers or first responders to "become their own rescue," she said.
The flooding was the first natural disaster Lone Star IV had responded to. Typically, the company provides treatment through an appointment system.
Lone Star IV did not self-deploy, McLeod explained. She said they coordinated with organizations that were leading the recovery efforts to know where they could best help, whether that was stationing at a local church that acted as a resource center for flood recovery, or going to where volunteers and first responders were staying for the night to treat them there.
McLeod said they treated more than 250 people during those two weeks.