Adios, Allison
A Look Back at the Tropical Storm that Took Houston by Surprise
This photograph of Holcombe Boulevard, a major street in the Texas Medical Center, was taken Saturday, June 9, by Paolo Fabio Fiumara, a postdoctoral fellow at M. D. Anderson, who waded in from his nearby apartment to check on two laboratory experiments he began the day before.
HOUSTON—(Jun. 16, 2001)—The flood that surprised Houston and paralyzed it for one nightmarish weekend in June seemed so unlikely.
Everyone thought Tropical Storm Allison had come and gone. The storm had reached landfall near Galveston on June 5 and over three days had pounded southeast Texas with up to 12 inches of rain. But by Friday, June 8, the skies were clearing and only a few bands of rain showers were expected at the tail end of the storm.
About 6 p.m. that Friday, during Houston's rush hour, the showers began. The rain fell steadily, filling streets and underground parking garages. Cars stalled on roads and freeways. By about 11 p.m., the bands of showers that had been traveling north began to move southward back over Houston and linger. That's when the clouds dropped their payload.
Between midnight and 3 a.m. the rainfall gauge at Rice University, which is near the Texas Medical Center, unofficially recorded about 10.4 inches of rain. Some rain gauges around town reported 25 inches of rain in 10 hours. All told, Allison dumped about 3 feet of water on the city.
That night at the UT-Houston Medical School building at 6431 Fannin, floodwaters swamped the building to a level of about 22 feet. The flood filled the basement and part of the first floor. An estimated 10 million gallons of water filled the million-square-foot building.
Power outages and other flood-related problems caused eight area hospitals to declare internal disasters, including Memorial Hermann Hospital, the teaching hospital affiliated with The University of Texas Medical School at Houston.
At 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning, Memorial Hermann Hospital lost power, and the hospital started evacuating patients needing full-service care. UT-Houston physicians, medical students and nurses worked heroically as much as 32 hours straight evacuating patients. Some of them hand-carried critically ill patients in wheelchairs or gurneys down 12 flights of stairs lit by flashlight. Others kept patients on respirators alive using hand-pumped respirators that they operated for hours on end until patients could be transferred to another hospital.
On the morning of June 9, 2001, the medical school building's loading dock area was flooded with more than 20 vertical feet of water.
On Saturday morning, many UT-Houston medical professionals and students who weren't on duty at the hospital waded through flood waters to volunteer their help and evacuate patients. "The volunteerism and the altruism of this community is just amazing," Dr. James "Red" Duke, professor of surgery at UT-Houston and chief trauma surgeon at Memorial Hermann, told USA Today. "I get teary when I think about it."
On Saturday, the hospital closed for the first time in its 76-year history. UT-Houston physicians, nurses and students successfully transferred some 540 patients, including 150 children, from the hospital to outlying hospitals. "It was like out of a movie," said Jason Carter, a second-year UT-Houston medical student who helped evacuate patients. "It was an awesome effort. It was very well organized."
"A large number of doctors, nurses and staff worked through the weekend to keep people alive," said James T. Willerson, M.D., UT-Houston president. "Whatever our losses prove to be, it all would have been much worse without them. We need to find a way to honor them at some future date."
Over the weekend, physicians, researchers and students were allowed on a limited basis to enter the building to salvage and retrieve as many of their research projects as possible. Some were there to add dry ice to freezers in an attempt to keep cell and tissue samples frozen.
Damage to the university's research effort is great, said George Stancel, Ph.D., interim executive vice president for research affairs and dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Because of the flood and power outages, many researchers and doctoral candidates have lost years' worth of work. They are discouraged, but they will recover from this disaster because their research is a calling, said Stancel. "They're here because they want to cure cancer. They want to cure heart disease. They want to prevent strokes. These are people who feel this is a calling, and they may be down for a little while, but knowing these people, I'm convinced many of them will come back. They'll get right back in those labs and work harder than ever."
Flood water being pumped from the MedicalSchool Building.
By Monday morning, June 11, workers were pumping water from the Medical School building, and on Tuesday most of the water in the basement had been pumped out. The university's Internet access and email were mostly restored Monday after the storm shut those systems down on Friday night. On Thursday, the university's voicemail was restored. Clean-up crews started removing computer hard-drives from the hard-hit basement, in hopes of salvaging the data they contain.
Here's a timeline:
Tuesday, June 5: Tropical Storm Allison hits landfall near Galveston.
Tuesday, June 5 - Thursday, June 7: 12 inches of rain fall on the Houston area, causing flooding in some parts of the city.
Friday, June 8, 6 p.m.: Showers at the tail end of Allison begin to pour, making Houston's rush hour on roads and freeways difficult.
Friday, June 8, 11 p.m.: Showers stall over the Houston area and the deluge begins. From midnight to 3 a.m. the Rice University rainfall gauge unofficially records about 10.4 inches of rainfall. Ultimately, Allison dumps up to 3 feet of rain over the Houston area. The bayous overflow their banks and many streets and freeways turn into lakes.
Saturday, June 9, 1:30 a.m.: Electrical power fails at Memorial Hermann Hospital, UT-Houston's affiliated teaching hospital.
Saturday, June 9: Most of the day UT-Houston physicians, nurses and students evacuate some 540 patients from Memorial Hermann Hospital. Some UT-Houston researchers go to the medical school building to retrieve or restore research projects.
Sunday, June 10: Medical school and UT-Houston facilities management staff organize reclamation and clean-up efforts.
Monday, June 11: Pumps begin pumping 10 million gallons from the basement of the medical school building. All other UT-Health Science Center schools and buildings are operational, but Internet service and email are down most of the day. Voicemail is not working. Some UT-Houston medical clinics are temporarily moved to new locations to accommodate patients.
Tuesday, June 12: Clean-up continues.
Thursday, June 14: Voicemail is restored. Workers gain access to the basement of the medical school.
Friday, June 15: Early estimates place total damage to the Medical School at $72 million, a number that is expected to grow as evaluation continues. Access to the building is further restricted.
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