Anna Caplan
In the aftermath of the storm, Houston’s extensive network of hospitals and medical centers are mostly back online almost one week after Hurricane Harvey made landfall.
Videos by Rare
From Ben Taub Hospital running out of food, and then only partially evacuating patients, to flooding at MD Anderson, and another hospital fielding a request to provide 50 wheelchairs to a shelter, the city’s web of medical facilities is still being stretched to its limit.
https://twitter.com/Behrouz_Zand/status/901818444173205504
But after the storm, most are unfazed and still open.
In an interview on NPR Wednesday, Darrell Pile, CEO of the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council, the agency responsible for running the catastrophic medical operations center, spoke about the situation.
Pile said a simple tweet from one Houstonian to another was all it took to find 50 wheelchairs one day, but, given their proximity to the overly-full bodies of water, at least three hospitals are not out of the woods yet.
“The flooding is devastating, and we have at least two reservoirs where water is having to be released and is, in fact, flooding neighborhoods as we speak and has placed three hospitals in harm’s way,” he said during the interview.
He continued to speak on his optimism and realistic expectations for recovery:
“The three hospitals are monitoring the water coming from the two reservoirs very closely, and they could, depending on the flow of the water, find that they could become inaccessible to EMS agencies. We are tracking that very closely.”
If you need or would like to help in Houston, read more here.
