Years of valuable cancer research vanished into the murky flood waters that raged through Houstons Texas Medical Center in June.
Although precise estimates of the loss in research time and materials remain hard to come by, the impact on individual research programs ranges from a few months to as much as 10 years of lost work.
"I dont doubt that at all," Joan Bull, M.D., professor of medicine and director of the oncology division at the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, said of estimates that some researchers were set back 10 years by the disaster. "Thats not true in my case, but I know of some people who lost transgenic animals, cell lines, dataeverything."
Bull lost a couple of long-term laboratory studies that began in December 2000.
The flooding resulted from torrential rainfall dumped on Houston and surrounding areas by Tropical Storm Allison, which moved inland from the Gulf of Mexico. The rain began on the evening of Friday, June 8, and over the next 24 to 36 hours, as much as 3 feet of rain fell on some parts of Houston.
In establishing boundaries for coverage by flood insurance, experts often speak in terms of 100-year floods, which would be expected to occur once in 100 years. Some experts characterized Allisons watery impact as that of a 300-year flood.
The massive rainfall overwhelmed drainage systems throughout the city, leaving many of Houstons large freeways impassable. At least 22 deaths were attributed to the flooding. A day after the rain stopped, hundreds of automobiles and even 18-wheelers remained totally submerged or barely visible where they were abandoned on freeways.
"I heard somewhere that a 6-inch stream of water traveling at the force of this flood could knock a grown man off his feet and sweep him away," said Bull, who is also a professor of medicine at M. D. Anderson. "The water was a lot more than 6 inches deep."
Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world, took an especially hard hit from the flooding, as an unprecedented 8 to 10 inches of rain fell in a 2-hour period. Millions of gallons of water filled the basements and crept into first floors of many of the buildings.
At the University of Texas Medical School, water stood 22 feet deep, including the basement. When the cleanup began, industrial pumps spewed water from the building at a rate of 6,000 gallons per minute. The pumping continued for 4 days.
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All told, Allison caused an estimated $5 billion in damage in Houston, including $2 billion in the Texas Medical Center. The University of Texas at Houston, Baylor College of Medicine, and their primary teaching hospitals in the medical center were completely shut down for about a month. By mid-August some services and activities at the facilities still had not resumed operation, and others remained in temporary locations. Bulls oncology clinic, housed at Memorial Hermann Hospital, was among the services that remained closed.
Millions of dollars in laboratory space and materials were housed in the basements of buildings that were devastated by the flood. Baylor lost an estimated 30,000 laboratory animals, and UT another 5,000mostly rodents, but also rabbits, dogs, and monkeys. Many of the rats and mice were transgenic animals that are not easily replaced.
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Maintenance workers who tried to rescue some of the trapped animals very nearly became victims of the flood, she added.
Baylor also lost one of the worlds most extensive collections of breast cancer specimens; 60,000 specimens collected over 25 years were completely destroyed.
The flooding knocked out electrical power in many of the buildings, leading to the loss of countless cell lines, reagents, and experiments dependent on temperature control, said Bull. Computers, electrical circuitry, vast amounts of laboratory equipment, and at least one magnetic resonance imaging machine fell victim to the flood waters.
The flood shut down clinical research protocols, an impact obscured by the effects on basic research.
"Patients on research protocols couldnt receive treatment while we were shut down," said Bull. "I learned just today that one of my patients died. He had been doing well on an experimental therapy. He might have died anyway, but well never know now."
While Baylor, UT-Houston, and their teaching hospitals bore the brunt of the devastation, the only dedicated cancer institution in the medical center came through largely unscathed. The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center had about $2 million in damage, but clinical and research activities barely missed a beat compared with other institutions in the medical center complex.
"I wish I could say it was all due to brilliant planning, but we had a lot of good luck in our favor," said Margaret Kripke, Ph.D., director of research at M. D. Anderson.
The cancer center had the good fortune to be located at a point where the citys bayou system did not overflow. Additionally, much of the flood water that otherwise might have invaded the cancer center instead drained into the excavation site of an ongoing construction project adjacent to the center.
M. D. Anderson does not have computer or electrical equipment in the basement, and the cancer center has no underground connections to any other buildings in the medical center. These two factors are what crippled several of the other institutions.
"We were very fortunate compared to the other institutions," said Kripke. "Our major losses were in the form of reagents. Everything could not be put on emergency power, including some of our incubators and freezers, whose contents were lost when we didnt have electrical power."
Similarly, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston had only minor disruptions in clinical and research activities due to the storm. Located about 50 miles southeast of Houston, Galveston endured an initial outburst from Allison on Tuesday, June 5. The heavy rain that followed three days later caught the island community and UTMB by surprise.
"About 70 employees scheduled to work the Saturday day shift found themselves stuck at home, or wherever they happened to be, and couldnt get to work," said Michael Megna, emergency preparedness officer at the medical center. "We dealt with the situation by more or less declaring a staffing emergency that required employees to stay on the job until they could be relieved."
Taking steps to avoid a repeat of the disaster cannot eliminate the memories of what happened.
"Something like this causes all of us to rethink our lives and what we are doing," said Bull. "The situation has been so discouraging to our fellows, our technicians, and our secretaries. It caused a psychological dent. I just hope its not more than a dent and that we can hammer it out and move forward with enthusiasm."
Baylor officials declined to discuss the impact of the flood or the status of the schools recovery.
"Weve said all that we have to say. Were moving on," a Baylor spokesperson told the Journal.
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