Heroes of the Storm
UT Doctors, Residents Scramble to Save Patients

Without the aid of a flashlight, Dr. Annie Philip felt her way through the darkness at Memorial Hermann Hospital, searching for a pressure bag that would quickly push intravenous fluids into a critically ill patient.

"It was probably one of the most dramatic things I remember about that day," said Dr. Philip, a chief medical resident in internal medicine at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. "It was really by the grace of God that I found the pressure bag and got back to the patient."

"We got him down the stairs and onto a gurney," she said. "He lost his pulse when we got him into the parking lot, but we were able to stabilize him and get him into an ambulance and transported to Ben Taub General Hospital."

Dr. Philip was among hundreds of health care professionals and volunteers who worked around the clock to care for patients June 8 through 10, after water flooded parts of Memorial Hermann, crippling all the conveniences of modern-day medicine.

With no electricity, air conditioning or running water, UT-Houston doctors were forced to improvise. For the next 36 hours, as the Great Flood of 2001 took its toll on the Texas Medical Center, they made heroic efforts to calm and treat 540 patients and safely transfer them to hospitals that had been spared damage.

"There were many heroes that night," said Dr. L. Maximilian Buja, dean of the UT-Houston Medical School.

In the hours after the flood, Dr. Joseph Salloum, a cardiology fellow, quickly took care of his water-drenched car, then made his way to Memorial Hermann.

"It wasn't good," he recalled. "There were lots of patients - and lots of chaos."

Dr. Salloum used his cellular phone to call other hospitals and find beds for the sickest patients. Then he carried patients down dark stairwells so they could be transported by ambulance and helicopter.

One such patient went into cardiac arrest as Dr. Salloum and others were getting ready to move her from her bed to a stretcher.

"We lost her pulse. There was a defibrillator on a crash cart, and that was a blessing," Dr. Salloum said. "We resuscitated her, carried her down from the 8th floor and got her transported to The Woodlands. This all happened in the span of 15 minutes."

"At the time you don't think of how dramatic it is," he continued. "You just deal with it."

When Dr. Fabrizia Faustinella arrived at the Texas Medical Center, the first person she encountered was a lost patient who was screaming for help. The man had tried to leave the hospital to smoke a cigarette. When she found him, he was in the breezeway that connects the Hermann Professional Building and Memorial Hermann Hospital.

"It was very dark, and I couldn't see him very well," she said. "Then I noticed the IV lines in his arms, and I realized he was a patient and needed help."

Dr. Faustinella, an assistant professor of medicine, got him back to his room. Afterward, she made her way through the hospital, observing the damage and caring for patients.

"Everything was pretty much buried in water. It was heartbreaking," she said.

The emergency sirens in the hospital were still activated, and Dr. Faustinella had to stuff gauze in her ears to block out the noise.

"I had 12 patients. One elderly lady was there for pneumonia. One had acute pancreatitis. Another had a bowel obstruction. I just wanted to make sure they were all able to get their antibiotics," said Dr. Faustinella. "Some of the patients, mainly elderly, looked a little scared, so I tried to reassure them. I told them, `I want you to know that this is an emergency situation, but I will take care of you.'"

For more than 24 hours, Dr. Christine Cocanour, the attending trauma surgeon, triaged patients and prioritized the order in which they would be transported.

When the battery packs on the IV pumps and portable monitors died, she handed a medical resident the keys to her truck and told him to load up the equipment. She said her house, which didn't lose power, was less than two miles away and he could recharge the batteries there.

"They would recharge the batteries and bring them back to the hospital," said Dr. Cocanour, an associate professor of general surgery. "They did that several times until we got everyone out of the ICU."

Dr. Kim Connelly Smith, an associate professor of pediatrics, helped with the evacuation of more than 150 children, many who were critically ill.

"I have lived through hurricanes at The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and other floods in Houston, but have never in my life been through anything like this," Dr. Connelly Smith said. "The drama was beyond imagination. We hand-ventilated patients for more than 12 hours while awaiting transport, carried them down 10 flights of stairs on backboards, and loaded them onto U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopters and assisted by young men in green camouflage outfits."

Doctors and nurses worked frantically to find other hospitals that could care for their young patients.

"We came together and did heroic jobs," Dr. Connelly Smith said. "One 7-year-old girl with a severe infection in her brain was transferred to Beacon Health Children's Specialty Hospital in the Woodlands. When I walked into the hospital and she saw me, she brightened up and said, `I know you.' I cried."

Dr. Rebecca Girardet, an assistant professor of pediatrics, also heeded Dean Buja's call to join scores of faculty, residents and students to evacuate patients.

"The desperation of our situation was lessened by the energetic presence of many non-Hermann people - physicians, Boy Scouts and unidentified citizens - who had come to help," she said. "Near and distant hospitals also graciously played a large part by opening their doors to our patients and medical staff."

"I feel privileged to have had a role in the evacuation effort and am very proud of Memorial Hermann Hospital's response to this crisis," she continued.

Dr. James H. "Red" Duke, John B. Holmes Professor of Clinical Sciences and chief of the Medical School division of general surgery, was out of town when the flood struck.

"When I found out what was wrong, I was hell-bent on getting back here. I caught a flight from Albuquerque, N.M. to Midland, Texas, then I flew to Dallas and took another flight to Austin," Dr. Duke said. "I bummed a ride to Columbus, Texas and found someone else who drove me to Houston."

After his long journey, Dr. Duke triaged the remaining patients at Memorial Hermann and began to make rounds at the hospitals where many of the patients had been transferred. Dr. Duke, chairman of the Southeast Texas Trauma Regional Advisory Council, also coordinated efforts to make sure there were enough medical personnel to care for trauma patients.

"These were just a few of the doctors who were real heroes during the hospital evacuation," Dean Buja said. "Now we are continuing to deliver care to all our patients throughout the city of Houston."

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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