Hunh. A friend emails something to add to our stress levels next time a hurricane’s in the Gulf of Mexico. From the NY Times:
Much of the University of Texas medical school on this island suffered flood damage during Hurricane Ike, except for one gleaming new building, a national biological defense laboratory that will soon house some of the most deadly diseases in the world.
How a laboratory where scientists plan to study viruses like Ebola and Marburg ended up on a barrier island where hurricanes regularly wreak havoc puzzles some environmentalists and community leaders.
A bio-defense lab on a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t strike me as the brightest idea ever hatched, folks.
Officials at the laboratory and at the National Institutes of Health, which along with the university is helping to pay for the $174 million building, say it can withstand any storm the Atlantic hurls at it.
Built atop concrete pylons driven 120 feet into the ground, the seven-floor laboratory was designed to stand up to 140-mile-an-hour winds. Its backup generators and high-security laboratories are 30 feet above sea level.
The pylons sound great… but that 140-mph winds thing? Not so much. In fact, that’s only a Cat 4 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale — and while storms don’t often hit the coast that high, it has happened.
The laboratory will do research into some of the nastiest diseases on the planet, among them Ebola, anthrax, tularemia, West Nile virus, drug-resistant tuberculosis, bubonic plague, avian influenza and typhus.
Does that building sound tough enough to you?
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