Fears over deadly bugs in lab hit by Harvey
FEARS are mounting for the safety of a biological lab containing deadly diseases on an island flooded by Tropical Storm Harvey in Texas.
The Galveston National Laboratory (GNL) on Galveston island off the Texas coast in the Gulf of Mexico has been inundated with floodwaters. The lab contains samples of hundreds of viruses, insects and microbes, many of which would spread extreme danger if they were to escape.
According to its website, the lab’s mission is to develop “therapies, vaccines, and diagnostic tests for naturally occurring emerging diseases such as SARS, West Nile encephalitis and avian influenza – as well as for microbes that might be employed by terrorists”.
Almost no news has come from Galveston as reporters have been unable to reach the island because of severe flooding.
The lab says its facilities have been constructed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane.
Harvey, which is devastating south-east Texas even as it has been downgraded to a tropical storm, made landfall from the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 4 hurricane on Friday.
The lab says it maintains “impeccable, explicit, and transparent safety standards at all levels of biological containment, consistent with federal laws and guidelines”.
The eight-storey buildings containing the labs have pilings into the earth 37m deep. All the lab facilities are at least 9.1m above ground, high enough to withstand even the most severe flooding.
But with electric power out to at least 100 000 customers in southeast Texas, there is fear that power going out at the lab would release the pressure needed to contain the deadly bugs in their secure storage containers.
The lab has back-up electric generators. But the generators run on fuel that would have to be replenished. It is not known if the lab is accessible to emergency crews to refuel the generators.
“As I see it, the existential problem is this: What happens if and when the fuel for the back-up generators runs out?” asks University of Illinois professor Francis Boyle, an expert in biological weapons.
“The negative air pressure that keeps the bugs in there ends. And the bugs can then escape.”
Boyle drafted the US domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention, known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989. He said in an e-mail he believed the Pentagon should send a national biological control team to Galveston to secure the lab.
“State-of-the-art systems built into the design of the GNL help protect workers and prevent any release of infectious agents,” the lab says on its website. “Double and triple redundancies in equipment and systems help ensure that if an unexpected failure does occur, a back-up is in place to maintain safety.”
The lab says that “plans are in place to shut down and secure all laboratory operations if a hurricane landfall is predicted near Galveston. This shut-down and decontamination can be done quickly, with all work in the facility ceasing, the lab locked down, and all infectious agents and biological and chemical material placed into safe and secure storage”.
In the event of a power failure, the Galveston National Laboratory “will have primary power plus independent back-up power provided by multiple generators that are tested regularly,” the lab said.
In a 2013 incident, the Galveston lab lost track of a lethal haemorrhagic fever virus sample. It is not believed to have escaped the facility, however. The release of its hundreds of samples because of a power failure would present far greater danger.
So far eight people are now confirmed dead in record floods that are devastating south-east Texas, and the number is expected to rise.
More than 450 000 people will need help from the US federal government to recover and 30 000 people will need immediate emergency shelter, the government said.
The storm has so far dropped more than 75cm of rain on Harris County, where the fourth largest city in the country is located. The city of Houston, with 6.6 million inhabitants, has seen widespread flooding, including downtown where skyscrapers are standing in water about 3m deep. Heavy rain is forecast to continue until tomorrow.