BEAUMONT, Texas — The parking lot at the Veteran’s Affairs outpatient clinic in Beaumont has been constantly full since Imelda hit Southeast Texas in September 2019.
Instead of just parked cars, though, multiple tents have taken up much of the parking lot in front of the clinic.
The clinic has been operating out of the tents, or “mobile assets” since the clinic was flooded during Imelda but hope to be back in their building in a few months.
Some might find the tents reminiscent of an Army M.A.S.H hospital although the tents are tan instead of olive green.
The tents where staff have been providing healthcare services to veterans is officially known as the “Beaumont Alternate Care Site” though it is right in front of the building that housed the clinic prior to the storm.
“We're maintaining mostly our clinical appointments, we're doing labs, we're also doing mental health here at the site, Shina said.
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The plan is for the “Beaumont Alternate Site” to move back into the outpatient clinic building by mid-April 2020 according to Shina.
“We try our best to provide the ultimate care that we can provide, which we our maintaining our primary care managers on site, we're providing them with their primary appointments and those that we cannot fulfill here we are giving them referrals to our main hospital or our other local clinics that we have in the area,” said Danny Shina, site manager.
The building was flooded with “dirty water” and because of that the building has to be remediated for the mitigation of mold as well as any biological contaminants that might impact the clinic Shina said.
The mitigation has been completed and now the actual renovation of the clinic, which is expected to take two and a half to three months, is underway he said.
The clinic also took on water when Tropical Storm Harvey hit Beaumont in 2017 but in that storm the water came through the roof.
Because that water was rainwater instead of contaminated storm water rising from the ground the remediation in 2017 took less time than now.
