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Texas researchers regroup after Tropical Storm Allison

Soaked hard drives and drowned lab animals may delay new medical discoveries by months or years, but hope survives as research facilities dry out.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, amednews staff. Aug. 13, 2001.

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When Norman Greenberg, PhD, associate professor in the department of molecular and cellular biology at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine, woke up Saturday, June 9, he looked out his window at the water-filled street and knew there was a problem. Unlike many of his neighbors, he still had power. And when he turned on the television, he saw images of his water-filled workplace.

"Your heart just falls," he said. He struggled to get to his lab avoiding impassable viaducts. He drove through the city's water-filled streets at a snail's pace. Once he arrived, he quickly learned that he had lost 400 genetically engineered prostate cancer mice that were in the middle of a drug study. The mice would have to be reordered. Several whole lines would have to be recreated, and the drug study would have to start all over again.

"It'll be at least a year, year-and-a-half to get back to where we were on Flood Friday," said Dr. Greenberg.

Dr. Greenberg wasn't alone in his loss. Overnight, 10 million gallons of water had soaked Baylor and the neighboring University of Texas-Houston Medical School.

The basements of both institutions -- which housed the animal facilities --were completely flooded. The first floor of UT-Houston had a foot of water in it. Some doors were blown off their hinges. Some walls were gone. The main electricity was out. The backup power also failed.

"It looked like a lake," said George Stancel, PhD, vice president for research with the medical school. "And this wasn't the kind of water that seeps into your house. ... This was water that came in and exploded the doors inward, and when it hit a cinder-block wall, it just kept going." [...]