When natural disasters give you unexpected break from the lab
I wish the wildfire in California will be contained as soon as possible. My highest respect to the firefighters and rescuers who risk their life to fight the disaster.
In my years working in different labs, there were hurricane, wildfire and flood that interrupted work. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, I was in a place about two hours north of New Orleans. The only fortunate thing was no flooding in the little town I lived. Wind damage to the buildings and trees, power outage, water outage created a chaos. Summertime in the south without air condition or even fans was horrible. The campus got power back eventually, but not quick enough to keep the -20 and -80 degree freezers from thawing. There was no proper emergency power backup system. The lab I worked lost some samples in the freezers. One thing I still remember is that we had to reorder all the restriction enzymes from NEB and the company had a special discount for customers in hurricane affected area. New England Biolabs is the best! Fortunately, I was only in the first year of my graduate study and I didn’t deal with cell culture, cryopreservation cell line or animal models that could delay the experiments in the worst possible way in conditions like hurricane aftermath.
The first time I went to Texas in 2013 to look for housing, the beautiful pine trees in central Texas was a welcoming scene. Until I passed a stretch of area several miles along the highway with only burned down trees, I realized it must be wild fire. Just two years before I moved to Texas, a big wild fire destroyed acres and acres of trees and lots of houses. I didn’t expect to face the dangerous wild fire myself not too long after. The lab I worked locates next to a state park with forest surrounding every building. In 2015, a fire started pretty close to the campus. We could see the smoke around lunch time. We followed the evacuation plan and thought ‘Oh, we could come back to work tomorrow.’
Well, by the time we were allowed to come back, it was two weeks later.
Firefighters and emergency ride out team of the campus did all the can to prevent fire from touching the research buildings including an animal facility with hundreds of transgenic mice. There was no direct fire damage to the buildings, but the dense smoke from surrounding forest creep into every room. It took tremendous effort to clean, inspect and restore the ventilation system to make sure the working environment is safe for people to come back. My appreciation towards personnel who kept the campus running is beyond words. And all mice survived! The emergency power backup system was maintained during the fire and all freezers that connected to the backup system were safe as well. When I saw the trees about 20 feet away from one building were completely burned down, I realized how close it could be to lose the whole facility. The photo above was taken from where I lived. The fire was burning at least 10 miles away and the smoke was so thick.
Then, Hurricane Harvey came last year. The labs are in higher ground above the major highway, there is no immediate danger of flooding. However, the lower water crossings in the flat central Texas land were too dangerous to drive through. A small town about 20 miles away from the lab had the worst flooding in years due to river swelling with heavy rainfall. People in the campus said that we’ve been through fire and flood, the most common natural disasters in Texas. I think it’s enough experience for a lifetime.
