Hurricane Preparedness
Even when there were plans in place they could be changed due to the speed of the advancing storm
The revised UTHSC-H plan was tested with Hurricane Galveston. UTHSC-H buildings withstood the winds, and power outages and flooding were avoided in some places.
Hurricane Ike
UTMB was flooded:
- no staff were present due to SOPs emergency plans
-Animals had been stored in the basement, and were not reached in time to be saved.
over 1 million gross square feet of space for teaching, biomedical research, support functions, and animal care were out of service for months
3,200 faculty, staff, and students were displaced for more than a month.
Recovery resources for UTHSC-H included insurance claims, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds, institutional administrative and financial support, no-cost grant extensions, and financial supplements from the NIH granting agencies on a case-by-case basis.
Animal losses are particularly difficult to document unless each animal is tracked individually, which is not realistic
Psychological counseling was made available
about 5 months after the loss, a memorial service for the animals that died was attended by over 350 UTHSC-H faculty and staff
Preparation
• Decide beforehand where to go if you must evacuate your home. Essential personnel, and particularly ride-out
team members, should have plans for the shelter or evacuation of family and pets.
• Identify safe evacuation routes as well as alternate routes
• Prepare a portable disaster supply kit of essential items if you live in an evacuation area.
-Locate emergency generators in safe areas that will not
be flooded.
Ensure that an adequate supply of fuel is readily available ahead of the storm.
Ensure that research staff maintain inventories of research laboratories and freezers, with a backup copy at a secondary location.
Publish storm preparation strategies and procedures and make them readily available in an emergency response plan for use by all staff members.