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WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE EXCEPT IN THE HOSPITAL

Texas Children's Hospital Flood Protection Program
Houston, Texas

Our flood protection solutions for Texas Children's Hospital — the nation’s largest full-care pediatric hospital — allowed it to be one of the area's very few critical care facilities that continued to function fully during Tropical Storm Allison.

Our recommendations were thorough: define a line of flood protection using the West Tower basement walls, provide flood doors in the West Tower basement levels to isolate the building from the other institutions sharing basement corridors, block and seal mechanical and utility penetrations through the defined barrier and develop a Texas Medical Center / TCH Flood Protection System and Flood Management Group Policy.

We developed a flood door that meets the demands of hospital design criteria and that can be operational in less than five minutes per door, a significant improvement over the prior system. In June 2001, less than three months after completion, Tropical Storm Allison put the system to the test. While adjacent building basements filled with water, the West Tower remained dry. Our work earned a Texas Council of Engineering Companies Gold Award.