What to know about how UTMB prepares for emergencies
Hurricane Beryl was simply not supposed to strike Texas at all. For several days, UTMB’s Office of Institutional Preparedness did what they always do when there’s a storm coming toward the Gulf of Mexico.
A full week in advance, Assistant Director of Institutional Preparedness Dylan Lancaster said, “we were meeting daily and issuing regular weather reports from the National Weather Service. Most of the weather models were tracking Beryl to Mexico.”
“Some of the more aggressive models showed Beryl coming toward Texas, so we immediately began to plan for a worst-case scenario,” he said. “And every day, it shifted a little, and that’s why we put our continuity and emergency plans in place.”
Due to this storm’s unpredictability, it didn’t become clear that Galveston and Houston would likely receive gale-force winds until about 24 hours pre-landfall, Lancaster said. But in that time UTMB made a key decision that turned out to be a lifeline for the entire community.
“We pulled the trigger on calling our ride-out team, whereas many other hospitals did not and had to declare an internal disaster,” he explained. “That means that there’s some issue at a hospital that’s preventing them from taking on new patients.
“In a lot of cases, it’s lack of staffing or loss of power,” he said. “We had our ride-out team, so we did not have an internal disaster, so many ambulances diverted their patients to us instead of taking them to other hospitals.”
Ready for anything
It is the mission of UTMB’s Office of Institutional Preparedness to ensure that the university, staff and students remain prepared for any emergency that might arise.
As the Gulf Coast moves further into the height of hurricane season, Lancaster and Associate Vice President, Institutional Preparedness Mike Mastrangelo shared additional tactics to remain well positioned for whatever weather conditions may occur in Galveston later this season.
“Although our office has well-defined plans for all kinds of emergencies, including cyber-attacks, chemical spills and active shooters, hurricanes are the number one threat to the university,” Lancaster said. “We are in hurricane season now, and the first thing to know about our emergency preparedness is that UTMB has an exceptionally strong incident command team process.”
“When there is a storm arising, all the leaders come together and make key decisions like a partial or full evacuation, sheltering in place, dismissing students and staff, et cetera,” he added. “We have our own experts as well as close ties with the county and the National Weather Service, with several tools at our disposal to issue well-informed communications on the next steps.”
Whenever a serious threat is identified, Lancaster said, the command team convenes immediately, engages all systems, makes decisions and quickly implements a plan.
Business Operations and Facilities has mapped out all elevations of all buildings for our campuses, Lancaster said, which is instrumental in helping to predict the level of flood waters that might breach each building.
“With that information, we are able to prioritize which buildings to close, which can stay open and which floors of the buildings could be flooded so we can communicate steps going forward,” he said. “Just keeping a building dry is not the full story; there is more to safety than just keeping floodwaters out.”
Mastrangelo said it is rare for an institution to go to that level of effort to have a model of all floor elevations and lowest point of vulnerability modeled, which can be entered into a worst-case scenario for a flood event.
“In 2017, before Hurricane Harvey made landfall, we ran scenarios through our systems and determined we could continue providing health care; it’s why UTMB did not evacuate for that hurricane,” he said. “We remained open, and people continued to receive the care they needed. Had we closed, people would have gotten in cars and tried to drive through impassable roads. UTMB was the safest hospital in the region from the effects of that hurricane.”
UTMB had learned a great deal about emergency preparedness after experiencing Hurricane Ike in 2008, and again after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he said.
“Another key aspect of our plan is the continuity of academic missions,” Mastrangelo explained. “We had developed plans, and put them into practice during the COVID shutdown, when there was a change to the online environment to keep from disrupting the academic calendar.
“UTMB’s hurricane preparedness plan already had many of these continuity plans in place, and that was not too long ago,” he said. “So, we are just as prepared now as we were before in case it’s necessary for our academic enterprise to shift to an online environment due to a weather emergency.”
All UTMB employees are made aware of their responsibilities during an emergency event by using a “Five R’s” classification checklist. Based on their job description and duties, employees will either:
- “Ride out” the event, by remaining at their assigned work area;
- Provide “Relief” to other employees during an emergency;
- Be “Reassigned” to another UTMB location and assigned other essential duties;
- Work “Remotely” from a non-UTMB location; or
- Be “Released” from duty for the duration of the event.
“Every year, managers meet with their staff and go over their roles for such an event, and employees sign a document that shows they understand,” Mastrangelo continued. “We consider all staff to be essential; they’re simply in different roles.”
Dozens of emergency preparedness exercises are done annually with individual departments and with the institution, Lancaster said.
“We know that people could die if we’re not prepared. That’s why we work to ensure all campuses are familiar with our processes, and we are now actively updating evacuation sequences for patients,” he said. “We are always in coordination with our city and county partners and many health care coalitions in the area,” he explained.
"A very unfortunate ‘practice’ storm"
As for Hurricane Beryl, Lancaster said the main takeaway from his team was to remember that hurricanes are extremely variable, so we need to be flexible in our response.
“Sometimes the National Weather Service and other weather-reporting agencies seem to have a high level of confidence about a storm, but Beryl was more confusing,” he said. “There was a lower level of confidence about where the storm was headed, so I think that’s why a lot of hospitals were less prepared. The assumption was, until about a day and a half beforehand, that it would mostly miss us. It ended up being a very close call.”
Beryl’s eyewall came within seven miles of UTMB’s Angleton Danbury campus.
None of UTMB’s buildings on any of its campuses were severely damaged. All UTMB campuses remained open throughout the storm and afterwards. Most clinics reopened the next day. Students transitioned back to in-person classes shortly thereafter.
“This was a very unfortunate ‘practice’ storm in what is predicted to be a very active hurricane season,” Lancaster said.