HEROES of HARVEY
Dr. Myung Park
Physician navigates high water tethered to her husband.
Dr. Myung Park was on call the weekend Hurricane Harvey hit. She woke to the sound of heavy rainfall and knew instantly, even in the dark, that weather conditions were severe. Her first concern was how — not if — she could get to Houston Methodist Hospital.
“Discussing the situation with my husband, we realized there was no other way except on foot,” recalls Park, chief of heart failure and transplantation cardiology. As Rice Village residents, the couple was less concerned about the distance to the Texas Medical Center than the depth of the water in their path.
“My husband had some gear because he’s an outdoor type of person. I saw that he had a rope around his shoulder and asked, ‘What is that for?’
“He said, ‘I think we might need these. Let’s see how it goes.’”
Tethered at the waist, they walked for roughly an hour. The current moved quickly, and in some parts, water was deep.
“We used the rope attached to me so that I wouldn’t just drift away,” she says. “Water came up to my eyes, and I had to tilt my head. I didn’t have to swim, thank goodness.”
The danger of open manholes and live wires dawned on Park much later. At the time, reaching the critically sick — including one patient who received a transplant that weekend — was her singular focus.
One medical fellow walked an even greater distance than Park. His efforts, she says, were truly selfless and heroic.
Another colleague rounded out the determined trio, and nurses bolstered their efforts remotely by troubleshooting patient matters all over the city.
“Our nurses were the voices on the other end of the phone. They were the lifeline in those hours of crisis,” Park says. “We formed a band of people who just did what was needed for a few days.”
Physician navigates high water tethered to her husband