Lab containing cocktail of deadly diseases escaped Harvey’s wrath

THE GALVESTON National Laboratory (GNL) in Texas, which contains samples of deadly and incurable diseases, has reported itself safe almost a week after Hurricane Harvey struck last week Friday.

Late on Wednesday, it said: “We continued operations without interruption and did not incur any damage, loss of power or bio-containment during the storm.”

There had been a news blackout about the lab since the Category 4 hurricane struck the island of Galveston in the Gulf of Mexico, where the lab is located.

Reporters have been unable to reach the island because of severe flooding. The press did not report on the fate of the lab, which had remained silent, failing to reply to an information request.

The lab says it has been constructed to withstand a Category 5 storm, but when it was built in 2008, environmentalists raised the alarm. Hurricane Ike, weaker than Harvey, hit Galveston in 2005 and knocked out back-up generators at the University of Texas medical branch, where the lab is located.

“The university should consider locating its biohazards lab away from Galveston Island and out of harm’s way,” Ken Kramer, director of the Lone Star Chapter of the environmental organisation the Sierra Club, said a month before the lab opened in November 2008.

“Hurricane Ike was only a Category 2 storm. A more powerful one would pose a greater threat of a biohazards release.”

His fears were raised again this week. Professor Francis Boyle, who drafted the biological weapons anti-terrorism act of 1989, said he feared for the lab’s safety. “What happens if fuel for the back-up generators runs out? The negative air pressure that keeps the bugs in ends. And (the) bugs can escape.”