Houston’s Response to Harvey

Very late in the evening of Friday, August 25, 2017, I arrived home physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. That night marked the end of the most grueling six months of my life. Four home and away sub-internships in general surgery, two surgical sub-specialty rotations, a couple of research projects, and both Step 2 exams later, I had finally reached the end of my third year of medical school. My wife was curled up on our couch with one of her favorite books, soft rain pattered on the windows, and I turned on the local news shortly before falling asleep in my favorite chair.

When I woke the next morning, it was still raining. Having lived through several hurricanes before, I thought this was nothing out of the ordinary. Although Hurricane Harvey had unfortunately slammed with all its might into a handful of Caribbean islands while passing through the gulf, this meant that most of the high winds had dissipated by the time it hit Texas the night before. The storm was predicted to bring in buckets of rain before tracking inland, but this was nothing Houston infrastructure had not been able to handle in recent years. The rain was continuous but soft, and the trees outside stood perfectly still. My wife and I had five days’ worth of drinking water and non-perishable food, candles, batteries, a radio, and external chargers for our smartphones. I was beginning to feel almost too prepared. By what I could garner from the news on TV, Houston and its surrounding areas were handling the storm reasonably well. I was perfectly content to work on my ERAS application, lounge around, and catch up on a few TV shows I had missed over the past few months.

However, when evening arrived, it was still raining. This had not been part of the plan, and I started to feel nervous for the first time. Unexpectedly, Harvey had curled back out into the gulf to the south. Rather than dissipating further north, it had gathered even more moisture and strength and was set to hit us for the second time in the middle of the night. The tone of the news reporters changed; I filled every cup in our small apartment with fresh water and set them out on the counter before going to sleep.

The impact of receiving nearly a year’s worth of rain over a twenty-four hour period became evident when I woke on Sunday. It was no longer raining, but dark, angry clouds dominated the sky. When I turned on the water to brush my teeth, I got nothing in response. As our apartment’s water pump is in the basement of the nearby parking garage, I assumed it had flooded, so I went outside to check things out. As I began to descend our fourth-story staircase and the city came into view, the scene was unimaginably bizarre. For as far as I could see, every surrounding street was underwater. Car alarms triggered and then ceased about a minute later as countless vehicles were consumed by quickly-rising flood waters. The sounds of the bayou, previously a block or so away, were much louder now that it had risen, crested, and overflowed into my neighborhood. I gave myself a sad pat on the back for buying all those cans of soup and went to wake up my wife.

I did not understand the true urgency of the situation until I logged onto Facebook. One of my wife’s dental school classmates had posted desperately begging someone, anyone, to rescue his girlfriend and her family who were currently trapped on the roof of their home just south of us. Another person summoned any available nearby physician to attend to her friend; she had gone into labor the night before and was unable to make it into the hospital. Others requested food, water, and diapers for babies that would not stop crying; the parents had prepared well, but these supplies were lost to flood waters that rose so fast that they left no time for any action other than getting out. Still others searched desperately for beloved pets that had gone missing in the chaos.

I sat in front of my laptop stunned that I was so unbelievably fortunate. My fourth-floor apartment and parking spot were untouched. I never lost power and had plenty of water to make up for our broken pump. My childhood home about thirty minutes away was dry, and my parents were out of harm’s way. I was crushed to think that there were probably not that many people out there like me. Then I asked myself – how will we, not only as medical students but also as members of our local community, respond to this?

Not surprisingly, the answers started pouring in. What I got to be a part of over the next week and a half was really something. Out of all of the loss and destruction came humanity like I have never experienced before.

I witnessed leadership. Even before Harvey came, attentive and meticulous surgical faculty members listened to my ideas about patient disposition and answered my questions about crisis preparation as they planned to lead our acute care and trauma team in the chaotic days that preceded the storm. “Keep asking these types of questions. One day, you will be in charge of something like this,” one of them said to me. After the storm, I saw members of my medical school class step up to organize over twenty teams of students that would venture out into the community to do whatever it would take to help those in need. Outside the medical community, leaders from workers’ unions, places of worship, schools, and many other community groups are still, months later, rallying volunteer labor, food, water, and essential supplies to benefit those in need.

I witnessed work ethic and devotion. Before the storm, I worked alongside those who prepared our safety-net, county hospital in the days preceding its arrival. Every single member the hospital staff – from the attending surgeon to the patient transporter – pulled extra weight to ensure that safe and timely discharges of non-critically ill patients occurred so that those who needed the most attention would be able to receive it from the few on-call doctors who would potentially have to ride out the storm at the hospital for several days. After the storm, I only heard second-hand stories since those involved were often too humble to share. Without a complaint or hesitation, doctors and nurses waded and swam to work to ensure their patients got the care they needed. Interns that I had shared computers with only a week prior worked seventy-two hours straight since their coworkers could not enter the medical center.

I witnessed generosity. Millions of dollars poured into Houston from all over the world, but that was only the beginning. During the week or so that I was able to before school started again, a different person I had never met before brought me breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day. Another man decided to feed his entire neighborhood by setting up a huge tent in his front yard under which he grilled thousands of hot dogs for days on end. Store owners opened their doors to those who could pay and those who could not. A local furniture and mattress store housed first responders, and then donated some of the “used” showroom furniture to those who had lost their homes. It was not just money, but time and talent as well. I know exactly zero people who did not help significantly in the recovery efforts. The line to sign up for a volunteer spot at the downtown convention center was so long that people were sent away. No one thought about it first; no one questioned whether it was a good use of their personal resources. Everyone just gave.

I witnessed compassion. Folks from all over the southeastern United States took vacation time, packed up their boats, drove to Houston, and launched them in the streets in order to help first responders with rescue efforts. When I spent a week helping gut homes in a few local neighborhoods, both close friends and people I had never met before joined me to wade through disgusting water, punch out soggy sheet rock, tear out warped wood floors, rip up carpet filled with mold and mildew, and remove flooded furniture in homes of total strangers just because they felt like it was something they needed to do. Simply helping others was the norm, not the exception. It affected me deeply that those who suffered the most loss were often the ones who thought of others before themselves.

Even the lucky ones, like me, will remember the destruction and the loss for a while. For those who were most affected, life will probably never be quite the same again. Contrary to other storms that have rolled through town in the past few years, this one reached every square inch of our community. If someone was somehow left untouched by the storm, he or she probably has a relative or close friend that lost everything. However, I have a feeling that soon these negative memories will begin to recede just like the flood waters did. With time, I hope what will stick are the memories, like I have, that make me proud to be a part of such a special community – one that responded, every single one of us.