NFPA Journal - November/December 2017 - 58

STORM SEASON
AN NFPA JOURNAL SPECIAL REPORT

nfpa.org/stormseason

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO,
TROPICAL STORM ALLISON
DUMPED MORE THAN
40 inches of rain on parts of Texas.
The Houston area sustained about $5
billion in damage, nearly half of which
occurred at the Texas Medical Center
(TMC), a sprawling campus of hospitals,
research institutes, and other health
care facilities in central Houston.
But as Hurricane Harvey inundated
America's fourth-most-populous city
with even more rain and stronger winds
than Allison, inflicting far more damage
on the city as a whole, the TMC was left
largely unscathed, a trend that held true
for most of the 250 or so hospitals and
health care facilities in the Houston area.
"When you consider the magnitude of
this storm, hospitals prepared really well
not only in terms of the management of
their staffs and how they moved patients
when necessary, but with the investment
made by facilities themselves and their
emergency preparation over the years,"
Lance Lunsford, a Texas Hospital Association executive, told Health Facilities
Management magazine. Investments in
infrastructure made as a result of Allison and Hurricanes Rita in 2005 and Ike
in 2008 were largely responsible for the
positive outcomes during Harvey.
For the Memorial Hermann Health
System, which operates three hospitals
in the TMC and several other hospitals
and outpatient facilities in the Houston
area, these investments included extensive building "hardening" to prevent
intrusion from floodwaters, moving

generators to high ground, sealing off
underground tunnels, and more, according to Memorial Hermann engineering
officials contacted by NFPA Journal.
NFPA codes and standards like NFPA 99,
Health Care Facilities Code; NFPA 110,
Emergency and Standby Power Systems;
and NFPA 111, Stored Electrical Energy
Emergency and Standby Power Systems,
all play integral roles in preparing health
care facilities for storms like Harvey.

LEARNING FROM THE PAST
Michael Hatton, vice president of facilities engineering for Memorial Hermann,
started working for the health system
just a month before Allison struck in
June 2001. The storm caused flooding
in the basements and underground
tunnels connecting Memorial Hermann
buildings. "One of our campuses alone
experienced many, many millions of dollars in damage from Allison," Hatton said.
The incident triggered sweeping
changes that would take place over the
next 15 years or so, including sealing
off tunnels with concrete and pouring
concrete around the bases of buildings,
moving electrical systems and generators
to upper levels, and investing in the most
advanced roofing technologies available. The result, Hatton said, was very
minimal damages during Harvey. "The
outcome was very good," he said, "and I
think it helps validate our best practices
when it comes to our utility systems."

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With patients connected to electrical
devices that in some cases are keeping
them alive, power is perhaps the most
important resource for a hospital building to maintain during an emergency
event. This wasn't lost on Memorial
Hermann officials. Hatton said over the
years they used NFPA 110 and NFPA 111,
which both deal with backup power systems like generators, to make
their emergency power distribution as robust as possible.
"It wasn't just moving generators out of the basement-it
was also getting redundant
generators, paralleling them,
focusing on fuel systems, and
being more rigorous about
testing," he said.
While not specifically mentioned by Memorial Hermann
officials, the requirements
included in NFPA 99 closely
mirror what many Houston
hospitals did to prepare for
Harvey, said Jon Hart, the
NFPA staff liaison for NFPA
99. "The way Houston hospitals developed emergency
preparation plans and mitigated some of their risks goes
in line really well with what
NFPA 99 does," he said. "The
hospitals were self-sufficient,
operating like islands."
Of the 17 hospitals
http://www.nfpa.org/stormseason
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - November/December 2017
