The water main line break has put the entire city under a boil alert and many without water at all.
Lack of water has led to a number of issues at Odessa’s hospitals.
Medical Center Hospital held a press conference Tuesday morning to discuss the impact. “This morning, we became aware of the water and the water supply,” MCHS President and CEO Russell Tippin said.
He said emergency management teams internally have been handling the crisis since early Tuesday morning.
”They’ve been ramping up all the way since 4:30 this morning when it got more serious than we realized. I will say that I’ve had some good conversations with the (Odessa) mayor (Javier Joven) this morning. He’s been in contact with us early on as we’ve progressed through this. We thank him for the updates he’s given us.”
Tuesday, non essential surgeries were canceled. The only ones that MCH is providing, Tippin said, are those that are “urgent.”
A news release said MCH also cancelled all surgeries/procedures for Wednesday morning. They will make a decision no later than 7 a.m. to decide if afternoon surgeries for Wednesday will be cancelled as well, the release said.
“All our surgeries were canceled except anything that is urgent and when I mean urgent I mean like if you have a baby that’s coming, we’re going to have the baby,” Tippin said. “We’re on what we call a diversion, which means we’re not taking any patients from out of town. It’s just Odessa patients. Our emergency room has never been closed so if someone has an emergency, they can still come in and get emergency treatment.”
No one has been diverted just yet, Tippin said.
“But we are in contact with our partners so if they have someone that they would naturally send us, we would talk to them and help them find another place to go to,” Tippin said. “So far, we’re ok.”
“I would say the majority of patients that have been impacted the most have been those having surgery,” MCH Chief Nursing Officer Christin Timmons said. “We’ve had to cancel all of those today. We’re doing our best to make sure those that are in house patients are cared for and understand what’s going on. We’re communicating that with them. But their toilets are flushing and they’re getting everything needed to take care. It’s the ones that got here at 5:30 in the morning for surgery that we had to cancel or put them on hold”
When asked how many surgeries were canceled Tuesday, Timmons did not have a specific number but Tippin said “a lot.”
Water has been brought in to MCH. Tippin says there’s been enough drinking water for patients and staff as well as water needed for the AC units and for the toilets. “We’ve also had an incredible amount of people and companies from around town that have helped us,” Tippin said. “We have all kinds of water and we’re doing crazy things with the water. The biggest thing is flushing the commodes. Some people have been filling buckets with water and we’ve called them the bucket brigade and they’re dumping water into the commodes to get them to flush. This morning, we’ve got 200 patients in the house on the patient floor. We’re working to get the ones that are ready to go home.”
At noon Tuesday, the MCH Urgent Care Clinic on JBS and West Odessa have reopened and should be opened until about 6 p.m. “As of lunchtime, we’re going to reopen the JBS clinic and on the west side,” Tippin said. “We’re going to open those from 12 until about 6 p.m. tonight so that our ER doesn’t get overloaded. We want people to know that if their on the west side that if they need something and they’re not sure it’s an emergency, they can always go to the west clinic.” Tippin said the situation is constantly being reassessed as the hours progress. We’re going to constantly reassess this situation as we go along,” Tippin said. “We’re on the same time line as everybody else is. 24-48 hours. It’s all going to depend on getting the pipe fixed and getting it drained and re-pressured. But when we talk about what water does in our building, our air conditioning runs on the water, our fire sprinkler system, everything runs on the water. Cleaning the utensils that people use for surgery, that requires steam. All of that has been evaluated. We’ve been working with our emergency crew to make sure that things have been addressed and that our patients’ needs are met. We’re holding it together. It’s been wacky. We have people doing things that they never thought they’d do. All of us with buckets, pouring them in toilets but sometimes, you got to do what you got to do to take care of your patients. It’s been a little difficult but we want to say thank you to our friends in the community. We’ve had Martin County Hospital reach out to us and brought a truckload of water.”
MCH Chief Operating Officer Matt Collins also detailed some of the water situation on campus. “We’re a large campus,” Collins said. “You can imagine the water consumption for a facility this size any given night. There’s quite a lot of water that we use. The main thing we were concerned about this morning was our AC system and the ability to keep the building cool. We have chillers and water towers that cool water to help them operate. That’s going through a thousand gallons of water to operate. Without city water, that’s been difficult to operate but we have tanker trucks coming in and rotating for us. We’re keeping those cooling towers operating. We believe that’ll be fine until the city gets the water back up.”
