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  • here in a convention center in Detroit, Lieutenant Colonel Greg Turner is preparing for a new kind of war court engineers.

  • One disastrous many times.

  • Hurricane response.

  • Flooding that normal playbook stuff.

  • What's unique about this is it's not in our playbook.

  • We'll build partitions.

  • But with 22 years of service to his country, Lieutenant Colonel Turner is no stranger to crisis.

  • This reminds me of my time spent in New Orleans.

  • 2005.

  • Respond to Hurricane Katrina.

  • This is different, but it's nationwide, and some of them were not used.

  • Thio.

  • But we're ready for this.

  • 1000 miles away in New Orleans, Louisiana native doctor Jim Achin knows all too well.

  • The damage.

  • The hurricane rock.

  • If Katrina was hell, what's Cove?

  • In 19 games all across the country, it's places like these that are struggling to stay about.

  • This virus is attack Louisiana, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia and Michigan.

  • Tonight we take you inside some of these emerging hot spots and their fight to slow this outbreak.

  • Amazing.

  • Two days ago, this was a blank concrete floor.

  • Now we're putting a 600 rooms into here with nursing stations in Detroit.

  • Lieutenant Colonel Turner is tasked with the colossal order transform downtown TCF Convention Center into the largest alternative hospital in Michigan.

  • After ninth of April, we should have 1000 beds in here.

  • Staff working at cases in Michigan have been steadily climbing, doubling every three days.

  • The numbers now well over 10,000 infected with more than 400 deaths, roughly 100,000 square feet.

  • And we can put build patient rooms into that.

  • As the city braces for a surge of new covert 19 cases.

  • Lieutenant Colonel Turner and his team, also anticipating they'll build additional sites we are looking across the state, has done assessments, mostly in the Southeast Michigan area.

  • McComb Wayne, Oakland County's We're also looking West, but right outside the city, it's not just hospital beds that worry Dr Nick Gilpin, but staffing.

  • We certainly have the ability to do field hospitals in our community.

  • But who's gonna staff?

  • Um, you know, I barely have enough nurses and physicians to make sure that we're taking care of the patients within our own walls.

  • I certainly don't have the ability to lend any of my staff to another alternative care site for cares at Beaumont Health.

  • He and his team have been monitoring the spread in preparing for the worst.

  • We were watching the response that was happening in China, but I don't know that any level of preparedness would have been enough for this.

  • Frankly, I think it's fair to say that Detroit is getting crushed right now.

  • We are running out of ventilators, and I feel like we're playing musical chairs with the ventilators we have on right now.

  • I was talking with her bereavement office.

  • They're flooded.

  • Their tryingto make sure there's enough body bags.

  • The whole of the city of Detroit is a medically underserved area.

  • A lot of these patients are gonna continue to require care and way just don't have that infrastructure in place right now.

  • In Louisiana, cases have soared to nearly 10,000 off 42% jump overnight, with more than 30% of those patients hospitalized.

  • Sure, everybody's signing this.

  • Majority of the patients were caring for an hour All cove in 19 patients who require isolation and they're extremely sick.

  • Crystal Wright Singer, the E R.

  • Nursing director Auctioneer Health, just outside of New Orleans, is encountering a storm of patients we're seeing patients see compensate extremely quickly and placed on ventilators Already.

  • The medical center's West Bank location has no open.

  • I see you beds.

  • But there was some good news.

  • My colleague Marcus Morris spoke to the doctors there.

  • They said they had gotten the five minute test, the only hospital system in the state.

  • They hope these new tests will ease some of the burden of overwhelmed frontline teams.

  • I never thought that as an audiologist, I'd be on the I C U floor.

  • It's scary at L s u help.

  • Dr Jamaican speciality is wide scale emergencies from natural to man made disasters.

  • In Katrina, you knew that backup would show up eventually.

  • It may have gotten their late, but it got there with covert 19.

  • There may not be back up for, you know, and in fact, it's with Katrina.

  • We have plans, Pan.

  • We felt like we just work this plan, that we would get through this and for this Damn it.

  • At the end of the day, you think I can only hope that we've done enough.

  • It's a rare sort of bravery.

  • He and his team possessed cautious optimism, even in the face of a pandemic like this.

  • It's a nightmare in progress.

  • You have the combination of a rapidly spreading African virus and a highly virulent, uh, virus about an hour away.

  • It in better route.

  • The Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center has also begun seeing a growing wave of covert 19 patients.

  • I'm pretty anxious to see how today is.

  • Nurse Morgan Babin began recording video diaries earlier this week, not 100% sure.

  • How things can you burst from here By this morning?

  • I didn't sleep too well.

  • Growing realization of the very real peril of her work on the front line.

  • I think I just started reflecting back home a shift from yesterday.

  • Several of us started to kind of smell an odor, which is natural, not speaking about the patient, and we kind of looked at each other like you smell that because if you're in 95 whenever you get fitted for in 95 they do a smell test and you shouldn't be able to smell things just made me realize what a big sacrifice myself and my co workers are making.

  • In New York, the upper center of America's crisis, the numbers air stagger.

  • The death toll Maur than 1500 more than 650 people dying in just 24 hours.

  • The Javits Convention Center now accepting covert 19 patients.

  • Toe handle the overflow.

  • This is our you can see.

  • All the rooms are filled their stations everywhere because of this in this video provided by Mount Sinai Queens Dr Matthew, by taking us inside his emergency room, all these patients here sitting out there always because we're full.

  • Earlier this week, a B C's Eva Pilgrim went toe one of the New York boroughs that's been hardest hit.

  • Queens President Trump's hometown.

  • So what's it like right now?

  • It's madness.

  • Another ambulance just pulled out.

  • This woman says her aunt is covert 19 positive and has pneumonia scared.

  • Let's give more than 20% of the M s.

  • Forest is now out sick, but the city is getting some much needed relief.

  • 250 Maur ambulances are coming right away to New York City from FEMA from all over the country.

  • You can't come quickly enough for John Ruegen.

  • It's been a week since he last saw his son last night.

  • He asked me, he said, When you get a cut when you gonna come get me.

  • I told him when everybody stops going, come sick when they stopped going to heaven.

  • But it isn't just big cities and their suburbs.

  • Almost 200 miles outside of Atlanta, there's another simmering hot spot, small Hamlet in the southwest corner of Georgia.

  • With the governor, Justin stated a statewide shelter in place order.

  • You know you're not safe in rural America.

  • Smaller than this isn't just for the big cities eyes for all of the United States.

  • The Phoebe Putney Health System, which serves three counties in southwest Georgia, has reported at least 750 cases and at least 35 deaths.

  • Carly Rice is a nurse here.

  • Yes, they I had thio face time a family member so they could say goodbye to their mom, their their grandma.

  • And it is so hard you start thinking about your family.

  • If this was, you know that for Terek a Parks, this was her reality.

  • She was diagnosed in March and came close to death door over, though that told me something that's so for this talk.

  • She went to the e r twice doctors telling her that her organs were on the verge of shutdown.

  • I started living through our old pictures of my kids.

  • I was crying because I didn't feel any more.

  • But she pushed through making it home to a two week isolation.

  • So this is where I have been since March 14.

  • Self isolation at is fine.

  • But on this day I am finally free again.

  • I am out of quarantine.

  • Up at Erica is reclaiming what?

  • Covert.

  • 19 stole.

  • I'm excited.

  • I'm gonna ready to love my kids.

  • Okay.

  • From Roll America to our urban sentence, this spread of covert 19 is growing men and women putting their lives and for some, their experience with disastrous past to use to this really and current danger.

  • Your courage reminds me of the words of Booker T.

  • Washington 18 95.

  • Plant your bucket where you stand.

  • So you decided to plant your bucket in Warley.

  • It will always be in New Orleans, and it will always be with my colleagues, my residents and wonderful hospital working.

  • Hi, everyone.

  • George Stephanopoulos here.

  • Thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel.

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  • Thanks for watching.

here in a convention center in Detroit, Lieutenant Colonel Greg Turner is preparing for a new kind of war court engineers.

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