Heroes of the Storm, Part One
Medical School doctors, residents scrambled to save patients
Dr. James H. "Red" Duke, John B. Holmes Professor of Clinical Sciences and Medical Director of Life Flight, after surveying the flood damage at the Medical School. Copyright 2001, Patty Wood
HOUSTON—(Jun. 19, 2001)—Without the aid of a flashlight, Annie Philip, M.D., felt her way through the darkness at Memorial Hermann Hospital, searching for a pressure bag that would quickly push intravenous fluids into a critically ill patient.
"It was probably one of the most dramatic things I remember about that day," said Philip, a chief medical resident in internal medicine at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. "It was really by the grace of God that I found the pressure bag and got back to the patient.
"We got him down the stairs and onto a gurney," she said. "He lost his pulse when we got him into the parking lot. We were able to stabilize him, though, and get him into an ambulance and transported to Ben Taub."
Philip was among hundreds of health-care professionals and volunteers who worked around the clock to care for patients June 8-10 after water flooded parts of the hospital, crippling all the conveniences of modern-day medicine.
With no electricity, air-conditioning or running water, UT-Houston doctors were forced to improvise.
For the next 36 hours, as the Great Flood of 2001 took its toll on the Texas Medical Center, they made heroic efforts to calm and treat the 540 patients and safely transfer them to hospitals that had been spared damage.
"There were many heroes that night," said L. Maximilian Buja, M.D., dean of the UT-Houston Medical School.
In the hours after the flood, Joseph Salloum, M.D., a cardiology fellow, quickly took care of his water-drenched car, then made his way to Memorial Hermann. "It wasn't good," he recalled. "There were lots of patients - lots of chaos."
He used his cellular phone to call other hospitals and find beds for the sickest patients. Then he carried patients down dark stairwells so they could be transported by ambulance and helicopter.
One such patient went into cardiac arrest as Salloum and other doctors were getting ready to move her from her bed to a stretcher.
"We lost her pulse. There was a defibrillator on a crash cart, and that was a blessing," he said. "We resuscitated her, carried her down from the 8th floor and got her transported to The Woodlands. This all happened in the span of 15 minutes.
"At the time you don't think of how dramatic it is," Salloum said. "You just deal with it."
When Fabrizia Faustinella, M.D., arrived at the Texas Medical Center, the first person she encountered was a lost patient who was screaming for help. The man had tried to leave the hospital to smoke a cigarette. When she found him, he was in the breezeway that connects the Hermann Professional Building and Memorial Hermann Hospital.
"It was very dark, and I couldn't see him very well," she said. "Then I noticed the IV lines in his arms, and I realized he was a patient and needed help."
Faustinella, an assistant professor of medicine, got him back to his room. Afterward, she made her way through the hospital, observing the damage and caring for patients. "Everything was pretty much buried in water. It was heartbreaking."
The emergency sirens in the hospital were still activated, and Faustinella had to stuff gauze in her ears to block out the noise.
"I had 12 patients. One elderly lady was there for pneumonia. One had acute pancreatitis. Another had a bowel obstruction. I just wanted to make sure they were all able to get their antibiotics," she said. "Some of the patients, mainly the elderly, looked a little scared, so I tried to reassure them. I told them, `I want you to know that this is an emergency situation, but I will take care of you.'"
For more than 24 hours, Christine Cocanour, M.D., the attending trauma surgeon, triaged patients and prioritized the order in which they would be transported.
When the battery packs on the IV pumps and portable monitors died, she handed a medical resident the keys to her truck and told him to load up the equipment. Her house, which didn't lose power, was less than 2 miles away. He could recharge the batteries there.
"They would recharge the batteries and bring them back to the hospital," said Cocanour, an associate professor of general surgery. "They did that several times until we got everyone out of the ICU."
Kim Connelly Smith, M.D., an associate professor of pediatrics, helped with the evacuation of more than 150 children, many of whom were critically ill.
"I have lived through hurricanes at UTMB in Galveston and other floods in Houston but have never in my life been through anything like this," Connelly Smith said. "The drama was beyond imagination. We hand-ventilated patients for more than 12 hours while awaiting transport, carried them down 10 flights of stairs on backboards and loaded them onto Blackhawk Army helicopters greeted by young men in green camouflage outfits."
In between calls on patients at outlying hospitals, Dr. James H. "Red" Duke, picks up a change of clothes and paperwork from his office at the Medical School. Copyright 2001, Patty Wood
Doctors and nurses worked frantically to find other hospitals that could care for their young patients.
"We came together and did heroic jobs," she said. "One 7-year-old girl with a severe infection in her brain was transferred to Beacon Health Children's Specialty Hospital in Houston. When I walked into the hospital and she saw me, she brightened up and said, `I know you.' I cried. After two months in the hospital, she is now at home and is much improved."
Rebecca Girardet, M.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics, also heeded Dean Buja's call to join scores of faculty, residents and students to evacuate patients.
"The desperation of our situation was lessened by the energetic presence of the many non-Hermann people - physicians, Boy Scouts and unidentified citizens - who had come to help," she said. "Near and distant hospitals also graciously played a large part by opening their doors to our patients and medical staff," Girardet said. "I feel privileged to have had a role in the evacuation effort and am very proud of Hermann Hospital's response to this crisis."
Dr. James H. "Red" Duke, John B. Holmes Professor of Clinical Sciences and chief of the Medical School division of general surgery, was out of town when the flood struck. "When I found out what was wrong, I was hell-bent on getting back here. I caught a flight from Albuquerque to Midland, then I flew to Dallas and took another flight to Austin," Duke said. "I bummed a ride to Columbus and found someone else who drove me to Houston."
After his harrowing journey, Duke triaged the remaining patients at Memorial Hermann and began to make rounds at the hospitals where many of the patients had been transferred. Duke, chairman of the Southeast Texas Trauma Regional Advisory Council, also coordinated efforts to make sure there were enough medical personnel to care for trauma patients.
"These were just a few of the doctors who were real heroes during the hospital evacuation," Buja said. "Now we are continuing to deliver care to all our patients throughout the city of Houston."
— Meredith Raine