In Houston, Ben Taub Hospital is surrounded by murky water. On Sunday, the hospital prepared to evacuate some of its 350 patients, most of whom are low-income, but it had to abandon those plans because water levels rose too high. No transfers had been made as of Monday morning. Now, the hospital is running out of food, and ambulances are still unable to make their way through the flooded streets.
Ben Taub Hospital in dire need of food for patients https://t.co/AmElvJwSzE #houstonflood pic.twitter.com/UC8TVrPFym
— ABC13 Houston (@abc13houston) August 28, 2017
I spoke just after noon on Monday with Bryan McLeod, a spokesperson for Harris Health System, of which Ben Taub Hospital is a part, about life at a hospital in the middle of a flood.
Khazan: What’s happened in the past few days, and what’s your status right now?
McLeod: We had water penetrate into our basement areas. There are three buildings on campus, and all three have their own basement space, and all three of them took on water during the course of this storm. Obviously in the hospital proper, it displaced some critical support services like pharmacy, food and nutrition services, etc. Those have been displaced from the basement, and given that we can’t do hot meal service, because the kitchen’s obviously been closed down, we are relying on dry-food supplies. We have enough to get us through evening meal service Tuesday evening. Beyond that, it will require a food drop of some type.