In this first week we’ve accomplished a lot. Today there were dehumidifiers near the PCP beginning the process of drying it out. Some of the clinical systems are coming online tomorrow morning (not EPIC yet). One of the issues with bringing these systems up is the lack of AC for the servers (you all know how cold we keep our little servers, imagine what it must be like for the servers that run the whole university!)
Family Medicine is planning to start assessing and preparing Stewart Road Family Health as soon as possible. We hope to be here to meet the Galveston community’s needs as residents return to the Island.
For those of you waiting to return to your homes here, watch the Noon press conference on Saturday — we’re hoping that the Mayor and City Manager may lay out a time line and process for the return of residents to the Island.
Finally, the UTMB main site mentioned the availability of Employee Assistance Program services to all employees. I strongly encourage you to take advantage of these services. For more information, please visit http://www.utmb.edu.
I won’t be posting any more news this weekend, but even though we aren’t posting news it doesn’t mean the work has stopped. I’ll give you another update early next week. Please try to have a safe, enjoyable weekend wherever you are.
Julia
To all Family Medicine folks:
As you may have noticed from the changes in http://www.utmb.edu today, UTMB is working hard to get back to business. Everyone on campus, in Galveston, and many, many folks around the state are working hard. We’d like to thank them all!
We’d like to ask our Family Medicine family to continue to be patient as basic services are restored and repairs started. While news is good, water and sewage services are still very fragile. But carpets have been pulled from Stewart Road Family Health, and similar repairs are about to start in the PCP.
Predoc has many clerkship students heading to Austin to take their exam tomorrow, and Residency is placing our residents at off-campus rotations for the next month. We restored several of our databases today, and should have a temporary department website up and running by the end of the day tomorrow.
Given all of the progress we’ve made in such a short period of time, I am definitely hopeful today. I hope all of you are continuing to do well. Please continue to keep in touch. If anyone in our Family Medicine family needs help, please let us know.
Julia
All,
Today we saw a lot of progress at UTMB. As you may have seen, UTMB announced that 4 mainland clinics will be opening tomorrow (see http://www.utmb.edu for more info). We’re also hoping an access hotline for patients will be up and running soon.
Water is back in a few parts of the Island and UTMB tonight. Electrical workers are all over, working hard to restore power.
Some of you have expressed concern for Dr. Thompson. Judy reported that she is well. Her house is one of the ones that got water back today, and she has gotten some rest after a very long weekend.
The really big news for today is that Judy was able to do a walk-through of the PCP today. She says the first floor is a little soggy and the carpets will have to be pulled out. She also went through the second floor and it looks good. There were only a few places where it looked like the roof leaked, and only one of those was over a desk/office (Nickie’s). I think she said they were supposed to begin tearing out carpets pretty quickly.
Outside UTMB, businesses on the Island are working hard to clean up and offer some services. In all it sounds like those down on the Island are working hard to clean things up and get basic services back online so it is safe for the rest of us to come back. I personally would like to thank all of them for their hard work. I know we’ve got a lot of work to do still, but I look forward to the day when we can look back on this and say that we triumphed.
Have a good night, and stay safe,
Julia
An institutional update has been posted which concerns UTMB faculty, staff and students. Please read the update at: http://www.utmb.edu.
To all of our Family Medicine family, I was sent a picture of the PCP that was taken yesterday. We thought sharing it with you might help reassure you all that we will be back. Keep in touch.
-Julia
P.S. I’ve been getting a lot of messages from people who are not an employee/student/resident of the Department of Family Medicine. I’m willing to help as much as I can but I do not have any information beyond what is already posted here. I do not have images of any other location. Please see www.utmb.edu for how you can get information. If you’re in another department, please contact your supervisor or department administrator for department-specific inforamtion.
We have emergency power in the following research buildings: Basic Sciences, Medical Research Building, Building 17, Galveston National Laboratory, Shope Lab, Old Shrine, Surgical Research Annex, Mary Moody Northen, Dockside, Ewing Hall and Keiller. It is critically important for researchers who have laboratories in any OTHER building to send their “E1 early-return” staff tomorrow so their freezers can be replenished with dry ice. We have received 60,000 pounds of dry ice in the last two days. The laboratory “E1 early return” staff from any other buildings who did not show up today are encouraged to return tomorrow to replenish dry ice if necessary and to assess the state of their laboratories.
Please, only one E1 staff member per laboratory group should return. Please report to the MRB lobby starting at 9:00 tomorrow and wear closed-toed shoes.
We need help moving animal materials and cages because the elevators in several buildings are not yet operational. This is important work to preserve our animal colonies. Any research staff living on Galveston Island — or any UTMB research staff living off-island — who have E1 badges are welcomed to join the ARC team with these important moves tomorrow.
Please report to MRB lobby after 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. Our work stabilizing our important research repositories is making good progress. We appreciate your help.
All Family Medicine faculty, residents, and staff (both clinical and academic) should contact us now please. If you are a resident, please contact Dr. Lisa Nash or Linda Hubbell. Others, please contact me (Julia Essex). We are trying to ascertain the following:
- is everyone ok?
- where are you?
- do you have a place to stay?
I am compiling a list of people who live in the areas most affected (Galveston Island all parts, Bolivar Peninsula, etc.) and trying to track them down. If you can add a coworker (or yourself) to the list, please let me know. Regardless of where you live, I want to hear from you.
All displaced employees are encouraged to register with FEMA (www.fema.gov). I understand housing assistance, as well as other benefits, is available. Judy asked me to convey again to y’all that people still have jobs and that Dr. Callendar is asking that we all not look for other jobs. We’re ok. UTMB is working on improving communications with faculty and staff.
Please get some rest, as I’m sure we all need it with all the worry. If you have any questions, send them to me or call me. I am here for each and every one of you and will try to connect you with whatever or whoever you need.
You can email me at jmessex@utmb.edu or call/text me at 409-789-3117 (leave messages if you need to).
Julia Essex
UTMB is still on emergency status and lock down mode.
Non-essential employees cannot return to UTMB or Galveston at this time. Please make sure your supervisor has your contact information. You will be notified if your designation status changes.
Essential employees
Thank you to all who stayed and helped. You should talk with supervisors to confirm your current status and responsibilities.
All employees who have been asked to return to work must bring their UTMB ID badge and essential personnel ID badge.
Most essential clinical staff are being released today; the health system administration is working on a release and reentry plan. Please wait to hear from your supervisor.
Students
There will be no classes for at least one week; the residency programs are being assessed and residents will be notified accordingly.
Researchers
Only those personnel who have been asked to ice down freezers will be allowed in. CLARIFICATION from earlier post: We have restored emergency power to MRB, Building 17, BSB, GNL, Shope Lab, Old Shrine and Surgical Research Annex. Departments that have research labs with research freezers in any OTHER buildings need to send their E1 early-return staff to campus today to replenish dry ice.
Patients
We will be back in touch this afternoon or tomorrow at the latest regarding appointments. We have a Disaster Medical Assistance Team on campus attending to emergency situations only.
The next update will come after 1 p.m.
Information Services completed the transition back to the production e-mail system last night and everything is up and operational, including the much needed spam filter. Messages from the emergency system were also transferred back to our normal e-mail system so any e-mail you received during the storm should be in your normal mailbox. IS will be working on the restoration of shared file systems (H: and S: drives) today but for the time being most of your personal folders will not be available. We will let you know as soon as they are!
The UTMB central phone switch is up and available. This is by no means perfect phone service but I’m confident we will make things work with what we have. Many phone lines are spotty due to water damage on the wires, problems at the telephone company central office, and problems as a result of how the switch took a hard shutdown during the storm. Technicians will be on-site today working these problems one by one. If your phone doesn’t work, try others around you until we can get yours restored. Incoming calls are working to phones that are working as well.
Again, words cannot express the awesome job a handful of IS staff are doing to restore service and provide support for command center requests. It is another example of Dr. Richardson’s “UTMB doing its best when situations are at their worst!!!!!” Great job everyone! Todd
I just got a message that the emergency mail system is going offline because our normal email is being restored. You can now get mail from http://webmail.utmb.edu, like always. To all those Information Services folks out there, thank you for all your hard work.
-Julia
