More than two months after Hurricane Harvey submerged much of metropolitan Houston, recovery is under way across the city. Residents and volunteers are gutting and restoring flooded homes. Government agencies and nonprofit organizations are announcing cleanup programs and developing plans to distribute relief funds. But many questions remain about impacts on public health. What contaminants did floodwaters leave behind? How many people are being exposed to mold – which can grow rapidly in damp, humid conditions – as they repair their homes? Will there be an increase in Zika, West Nile or other vector-borne diseases as mosquito populations recover? Or an uptick in reported cases of other illnesses?...
Houston
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After Building Apps For Harvey Victims, Houston's Techies Set Their Sights On Irma
Alex Konrad | Forbes | September 6, 2017
After more than two days on a boat rescuing upwards of 50 victims of Hurricane Harvey from flooded houses, Matthew Hager decided to try to help his hometown of Houston the best way he knew how: with tech. Though Hager and his friends looked like a ragtag volunteer rescue squad, he’s a web designer by trade. With other volunteers from his design shop Poetic Systems, he built what has become one of the central hubs for information on Harvey recovery, HarveyNeeds.org. Hager and his crew are hardly alone. As Harvey hit, Houston’s startup community went into overdrive, connecting over a volunteer Slack channel and gathering around impromptu hackathons to build at least 20 new apps and sites designed to provide support to residents, first responders and the city...
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Houston’s Flooding Shows What Happens When You Ignore Science and Let Developers Run Rampant
Ana Campoy and David Yanofsky | Quartz | August 29, 2017
Since Houston, Texas was founded nearly two centuries ago, Houstonians have been treating its wetlands as stinky, mosquito-infested blots in need of drainage.
Even after it became a widely accepted scientific fact that wetlands can soak up large amounts of flood water, the city continued to pave over them. The watershed of the White Oak Bayou river, which includes much of northwest Houston, is a case in point. From 1992 to 2010, this area lost more than 70% of its wetlands, according to research (pdf) by Texas A&M University...
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Infectious Diseases Could Sweep Across Texas as Harvey Floods Houston
Jessica Firger | Newsweek | August 28, 2017
In the coming weeks and even months, residents of Houston and other parts of southern Texas hit hard by Hurricane Harvey will be faced with the public health disasters that can result from dirty floodwater and landslides. The natural disaster has ostensibly turned the city into a sprawling, pathogen-infested swamp. Up to 25 inches of rain have already accumulated in two days. Rains are expected to continue until Wednesday night, and by the end, Harvey will have dumped 40 to 50 inches on the metropolitan area. Heavy precipitation is turning entire neighborhoods into contaminated and potentially toxic rivers. For many of the city’s residents, contact with floodwater is unavoidable, putting them at risk for diarrhea-causing bacterial infections, Legionnaires’ disease and mosquito-borne viruses...
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Is Energy Industry Ready to Join Open Source World?
David Hunn | Houston Chronicle | August 26, 2016
Landmark, a technology unit of the energy services company Halliburton, is betting that it is, unveiling a cloud-computing platform last week that will allow companies to collaborate on developing software to process the massive volumes of data they collect on everything from geology to seismology to chemistry to drilling to flows of oil and gas. The idea is that easy and open access to the code on which the platform is based will lead to faster and better analysis of the data and ultimately to innovations that allow the industry to extract more oil and gas at lower costs...
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Mapbox Releases Hazard Maps for Hurricane Harvey Affected Areas
Press Release |
Mapbox |
September 2, 2017
Mapbox has published a new map to give Houston officials and residents the most up-to-date information on the areas with the highest risk of hazardous materials in flood waters. The most up-to-date map can be found here. Using the most recent satellite images from DigitalGlobe paired with points of interest for superfund sites, refineries and other EPA toxic hazards in the greater Houston area, Mapbox created the map to highlight the areas of highest concern to help Houston police, other first responders and city officials plan for and mitigate issues associated with chemical plants, refineries and potential toxic contamination in flood waters...
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Open Data Highlights Post-Harvey Mosquito Health and Safety Threat
Jonathan Jay | Government Technology | September 5, 2017
Cities in southeastern Texas finally saw dry weather on Wednesday, after days of unprecedented rainfall from Hurricane Harvey. But while floodwaters started receding from many Houston neighborhoods, explosions at a Crosby chemical plant and Beaumont’s lost water supply showed how vulnerable the area remains to health and safety threats. Among these post-Harvey issues, storm-related flooding could increase risk for diseases spread by mosquitoes, which breed in standing water...
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Public Health Threats Emerging in Houston in the Aftermath of Hurricane Harvey
By Julie M. Smyth | September 22, 2017
Although Hurricane Harvey's floodwaters have largely receded, public health threats are emerging over polluted floodwater and contaminated drinking water. Chemical pollution from damaged industrial sites, flooded toxic waste site, and contamination by infection-causing bacteria have been the main causes of concern. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warned residents and cleanup workers who might be exposed to floodwaters to take precautions due to hazards such as dangerous debris, bacteria, and other contaminants. This article will review some of those public health threats.
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Recent Hurricanes Have the Coast Guard Rethinking Social Media’s Role in Rescue and Response
Nicole Ogrysko | Federal News Radio | September 21, 2017
The U.S. Coast Guard is still knee-deep in rescue and response efforts as the third major hurricane in three weeks hits the U.S. and its territories. But the agency has already learned a thing or two from its initial response efforts and is thinking about new tools it should develop to better prepare for future disasters. When 911 call centers quickly overloaded in Houston, residents in the area quickly took to Facebook and Twitter to ask for help...
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Scientist at Work: Measuring Public Health Impacts after a Disaster
By Jennifer Horney | November 9, 2017
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Sewage, Debris, Mosquitoes: Flood Waters Increase Health Risk for Harvey Victims
Jessica Glenza | The Guardian | August 30, 2017
Tropical storm Harvey continues to threaten lives in Houston, where officials are focused on evacuating hospitals and securing life-saving emergency transportation, knowing they face long-term health threats. “Our number one priority now,” said Chris Van Deusen, a clearly frayed spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, is “to make sure hospital patients and those with medical needs are taken care of.”...
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There’s a Disaster Much Worse than Texas. But No One Talks about It
Jonathan Freedland | The Guardian | September 1, 2017
A quick quiz. No Googling, no conferring, but off the top of your head: what is currently the world’s worst humanitarian disaster? If you nominated storm Harvey and the flooding of Houston, Texas, then don’t be too hard on yourself. Media coverage of that disaster has been intense, and the pictures dramatic. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this supposedly once-in-a-thousand-years calamity – now happening with alarming frequency, thanks to climate change – was the most devastating event on the planet...
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To ER Is Human...To Build an App to Find the Right Caregiver Is...
By Kim Bellard | September 29, 2015
I was prompted to think of ERs by a WSJ op-ed by Dr. Paul Auerbach. In it, he argues that non-emergency visits to the ER aren't going to stop, much as we might wish patients to do a better job of evaluating when they are actually suffering an "emergency." He notes the limited access to timely care from primary care physicians, and how it is not reasonable to expect people to make such rational evaluations when they or their loved ones are suffering. As he says, "You can't teach patients economics lessons when they don't feel well."
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We Need a Whole-Community Response in Health and Health Care
Susannah Fox | LinkedIn | August 29, 2017
It’s inspiring to watch the “Cajun Navy” of fishing and pleasure boats rescuing people in post-Hurricane Harvey Houston, along with the National Guard and other officials. I’m always on the look-out for examples of people pitching in to help each other and solve problems, whether in peer-to-peer health care, the Maker movement, or evacuating a plane, so I loved the article that David A. Graham just published in The Atlantic on why ordinary citizens are acting as first responders in Houston...
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