With the 2018 hurricane season officially underway, hospitals across the Grand Strand partnered with facilities across the region on Friday to practice a unified hurricane evacuation plan.

CEO of Medtrust Medical Transports, Josh Watts says it’s called the “Hurricane Palmetto” drill.

“Traditionally, a hurricane would not hit Hilton Head, Charleston and Myrtle Beach it would bounce in and come through but this event is trying to play out the worst case scenario of a cat 3 storm.”

Watts says this drill also allows them to utilize new technology to assure that no patient is unaccounted for during a storm.

“One of the things that sometimes happens is the mad dash, people get loaded on ambulances and they go places and they don’t know where they’re going, their family doesn’t know where they’re going so one of the things we are practicing is a new tracking system.” 

The drill will continue on Saturday in Murrells Inlet, Georgetown, and Charleston.