Hours later, the water shut down.
For the next three days, staffers at three Chambers Health facilities in Anahuac, outside Houston, pumped water from wellness pools, refilled a 275-gallon storage tank three times and carted drums of water between facilities so toilets could be flushed.
Burst pipes and frozen pumps throughout the community were reportedly the issue, said William Kiefer, CEO of Chambers Health.
“If we didn’t have our resources and our people being really clever on how to go about pulling water out of our pool and refilling that [storage tank], we would have been without,” he said. “The city and the county were struggling with their own things. …. As far as help, I don’t think there was really anything they could have done.”