9/16/08 Bloomberg.com: Texas Officials Work to Avert Health Crisis After Ike (Update4)

Texas Officials Work to Avert Health Crisis After Ike (Update4)

By Brian K. Sullivan and Demian McLean

Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) — Three days after Hurricane Ike delivered a less-powerful punch than predicted, coastal Texas is struggling to fend off a health-care crisis.

In Galveston, water and sewer systems aren’t working. Its hospital is closed. The city is littered with debris and officials are asking for help against disease-carrying mosquitoes. One of the biggest challenges may be ensuring clean drinking water for the region.

“We’re telling people who are here if they can leave, leave,” Galveston spokeswoman Mary Jo Naschke said by telephone today. “We are telling residents we will let them know when it’s OK to return. Right now it’s not good.”

When Ike hit land as a Category 2 hurricane on Sept. 13 with 110-mile per-hour (177 kph) winds, its eye passed over Galveston, perhaps sparing the city the worst of the storm’s fury. The storm surge in Galveston, predicted to be as high as 25 feet (7.6 meters), may have peaked at half that level, according to a National Weather Service tidal gauge.

Forty percent of the city’s 57,500 residents opted to ride out the storm, Steve LeBlanc, the city manager, said the day before Ike struck.

Most of Galveston is still covered by floodwaters, which have begun receding, according to a city statement.

Residents Survey Damage

Officials are letting residents onto Galveston Island to survey damage to their homes and then return to the mainland, according to the county’s Office of Emergency Management. There was a three-hour wait to get onto the island this afternoon.

In the U.S., most deaths from hurricanes typically occur after the storm passes, said Thomas Kirsch, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response in Baltimore.

Access to clean water is the most pressing issue, he said. Power failures can idle purification plants for weeks, seawater can make water undrinkable, and pipes have often been contaminated with sewage or chemicals. Tainted water can cause diarrhea and dehydration.

“It’s petrochemical heaven in the Gulf,” said Kirsch, an emergency physician who assessed risks in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.

Fourteen Texas and Louisiana refineries, with combined crude processing capacity of 3.72 million barrels a day, were closed in Ike’s wake.

In Galveston, a medical clinic is handling emergencies and giving out tetanus shots, Naschke said. The city has asked Galveston County to start spraying for mosquitoes, which carry and spread disease.

Tackle Pests Soon

Officials need to attack the pests as soon as possible, said Richard Pollack, a mosquito researcher at Harvard University’s School of Public Health in Boston.

“Within a few days, if they don’t do this, life is going to be fairly unbearable,” he said. “It is a real problem. It is a quality-of-life issue. You can’t tell if the mosquito landing on you or your child is infected or not.”

If unchecked, mosquitoes carrying diseases including West Nile virus could get out of control, he said.

Galveston’s hospital, the University of Texas Medical Branch, lost its generators and had to evacuate the last of its patients, Naschke said.

From the air, President George W. Bush surveyed the damage in Houston and on Galveston Island, where yachts had been tossed hundred of yards inland, shipping channels were littered with debris and homes had been washed off foundations.

The government is paying for “100 percent” of the debris removal and will reimburse displaced residents for the costs of hotel rooms and apartments, Bush said.

41 Deaths

Elsewhere along the Texas coast, entire towns were all but erased by Ike’s storm surge. Ike has killed 41 people in 10 states, the Associated Press reported.

Sanitation is going to be a problem in Galveston, with generators needed to pump out contaminated water, said David Paulison, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Long-term housing will be the next challenge.

“It’s going to be a while before people can live in their homes,” Paulison said today aboard Air Force One with Bush. Some residents may wait 18 months, Paulison said.

Curfews are in force in many of Texas’s hardest-hit communities and about 1.8 million customers in the state are without power. Thousands of residents have been lining up for water, food, ice and gasoline.

60 Supply Sites

Federal emergency officials are distributing more than 7 million meals and 24 million liters of water in East Texas, according to a press release yesterday from FEMA.

There are 60 supply sites in Texas. Twelve of those are being run by FEMA in Houston and the surrounding region.

Some of the depots aren’t accessible to residents, said Ben Smilowitz, director of the Disaster Accountability Project, a West Hartford, Connecticut-based aid watchdog group.

“The points of distribution are not spread out well enough,” he said. “Outside Houston, the locations aren’t adequately announced” on radio, he said.

Gary Anderson, a FEMA logistics official, said on a conference call today that most sites are located where local officials recommend. Separately, the agency is speeding up deliveries of food, water and ice, he said.

A 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew is in place in Galveston and 11 people have been arrested for looting, Naschke said. National Guard troops are backing up city police in enforcing the curfew, according to the city’s Web site.

About 70 percent of Houston should have electricity back by the end of the week, FEMA’s Paulison said.

About 3,300 residents and 110 pets have been rescued along the Texas coast, according to the office of Governor Rick Perry.

“Residents who have evacuated, stay where you are,” Perry said in a statement. “The worst thing that could happen is for people who are in a safe area where there is food, water and electricity to return to communities that have yet to have essential services restored.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net; Demian McLean in Washington at dmclean8@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 16, 2008 17:35 EDT