A flood wall being installed around the Iowa Advanced Technology Laboratories (IATL) building. Credit: Tim Schoon/University of Iowa
Two weeks ago, Hurricane Ian made landfall in Southwest Florida as a strong Category 4 hurricane. While everyone in Ian’s path was busy preparing their houses and making safety plans, scientists working in the Sunshine State had an additional concern: their research. Would knocked-out power harm their sensitive samples? Would the inevitable flooding kill their extremely expensive instrumentation and equipment?
It was certainly a possibility, but—being prone to tropical storms and hurricanes—most Florida laboratories were prepared. Despite hurricane damage estimated between $28 and $63 billion, most reports indicate little loss of science. The damage that did occur was mostly from flooding, with the cities of Fort Myers Beach and Naples particularly impacted.
Advance planning can take the guesswork out of emergency response and prevent a bad situation from becoming worse. That’s part of the reason why safety experts and regulatory agencies exist—to consider and plan for the worst-case scenario.
For example, all safety officers and some regulatory bodies recommend instrumentation and equipment be stored on a lab bench, rather than the floor. Despite being inconvenient, this saves expensive equipment from damage in case of a flood—be it from a natural disaster, frozen plumbing or leaky water tanks. The same is true of securing electrical wires and raising multi-plug adaptors off the floor as a best practice. Disaster pre-planning also includes keeping a detailed, up-to-date inventory of all supplies and instruments—including model numbers and serial numbers—along with contact information for the vendors. In the event of a disaster, this inventory will serve as a checklist to gauge losses and help facilitate a speedy recovery.1
Damage Assessment
Unfortunately, no matter how much planning goes into a lab, Mother Nature sometimes wins. Still, the recovery process does not need to be overly complex.
One of the first steps during initial damage assessment, which continues throughout the cleanup process, is documentation. The Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) encourages the documentation of everything, including photographs of flood damage, as government officials, insurance agents and others will inevitably ask for this information. It may feel tedious at the time, but “future you” will be thanking yourself in the following weeks, months or even years.
The initial phases of cleanup involve removing standing water, making sure water has not infiltrated into electrical junction boxes, assessing the saturation of drywall and implementing measures to stop water migration within the drywall. This can be done by using high-intensity heaters and fans to evaporate the water or cutting out a section of wet drywall to prevent further wicking.1
“Some damage may not be obvious,” cautions the APHL. “For example, small cooling fans on computers can ‘grab’ water and fling it across the computer’s internal electronics. Water will follow the path of least resistance, which means along instrument seams and through exhaust vents in ceiling tiles. Follow the water.”
Instrument Assessment
Scientists and lab personnel should start by conducting an inventory of all instrumentation and equipment, and comparing it with the lab’s most recent inventory on file. The Office of Indiana State Chemists developed an easy color-coded sticker system for flood damage assessment that can provide a good visual foundation for what the recovery process may look like.
- Red stickers indicate major damage; complete replacement recommended
- Orange stickers: noticeable damage; repair or restoration recommended
- Yellow stickers: wipe-down restoration; clean-up and assess
- Green stickers: no apparent water; proceed with use/evaluation
Qualified laboratory staff will need to assess data on all instruments below the red sticker level to ensure they are in proper working order. This is especially true if the laboratory is subjected to regulatory oversight, like the USP, or impacted by legal circumstances, such as forensic lab work for the criminal justice system. In these cases, the laboratory must be able to defend the data, if challenged, and demonstrate they are not skewed by flood-related problems.
The APHL suggests staff conduct a performance qualification even on apparently undamaged instruments, using certified reference materials or samples tested prior to the flood.
Gas Apparatus Equipment
While all instruments are vulnerable to water, some pose higher safety risks when damaged than others. Gas apparatus equipment is one such category of equipment likely to receive red stickers.
“The potential personal safety risks to operators and the resulting legal liability associated with the reuse of a contaminated gas apparatus product far outweighs the very limited savings that might result from a standard repair or even total reconditioning,” says The Harris Products Group, experts in gas welding and gas regulation and distribution systems.
According to the group, gas regulators and manifolds pose extreme risk if they are reused following damage due to exposure to waterborne chemicals or other contaminants present in flood waters. Here are just a few of the potential risks associated with reusing flood contaminated equipment:
For regulators:
- Heat of recompression fires in contaminated oxygen regulators
- High pressure safety device failure due to debris
- Pressure gauge explosion as a result of internal gauge failure
- Damage to personnel or downstream equipment as a result of regulator performance failure. Regulators, or other high-pressure devices, can fail in days, weeks and even months after exposure—even after repair if it is not done properly and thoroughly due to internal part corrosion or inadequate repairs.
For manifolds:
- Downstream gas contamination in pipelines and or process equipment
- Heat of recompression fires in contaminated oxygen pipelines/systems
- Pipeline protection failure potentially resulting in injury or extreme harm to personnel
Post-flooding Review
If pre-planning was key to saving part of the lab before the flooding event, then post-planning is critical in the case of a second natural or unnatural disaster.
Laboratory managers should undertake a detailed review of the response to the crisis and the cost of the crisis. Based on the findings, plans and biosafety checklists can be updated and measures implemented to safeguard the laboratory against future water events and to improve the laboratory’s emergency response.1
If significant parts of the laboratory were harmed during flooding, now would also be a good time to evaluate any laboratory design changes that could be helpful in the future. For example, in BSL-2+ laboratories, the Clinical Laboratory and Standards Institute recommends monolithic flooring, such as sheet vinyl. BSL-3 laboratories must use flooring that has as few seams as possible and is not porous. This flooring design, even for non-biosafety level labs, can help keep water from passing and settling under tiles or through walls.
Given climate change, extreme weather is predicted to become more frequent. A laboratory that is located in a vulnerable spot, such as bordering a body of water, may want to consider larger-scale preparations than flooring.
At Iowa Advanced Technology Laboratories (IATL), for example, workers installed a 1,500-foot removable flood wall to protect the lab on the University of Iowa’s campus. The “invisible” flood wall is a series of panels that can be quickly constructed to keep out floodwater and then taken down and stored when not in use. It protects the IATL site to an elevation 2 feet above the 500-year flood plain level. The IATL flood wall is the longest flood wall built on the University of Iowa campus following a devastating 2008 flood.
References
1. "A Practical Guide to Dealing with Laboratory Floods," Association of Public Health Laboratories (2015). https://www.aphl.org/aboutAPHL/publications/Documents/QS_PracticalGuideFloods_62015.pdf