If the hurricanes don't kill ya, the escaping bacteria might

I must admit that I wonder why President Bush, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and former Rep. Tom DeLay pushed to locate a biological defense laboratory that will soon house some of the most deadly diseases in the world in Galveston, a barrier island that is regularly hit by hurricanes.

True, the structure survived Hurricane Ike without so much as a scratch, but then Ike was only a Category 2 storm when it struck the island. What happens when a stronger hurricane hits?

“It’s crazy, in my mind,” said Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer in Houston. “I just find an amazing willingness among the people on the Texas coast to accept risks that a lot of people in the country would not accept.”

Well, maybe not so crazy when you consider Galveston was in economic free fall long before the rest of the country and the lab promised 300 new jobs for islanders. Also, at the time the lab was being discussed, the major focus of environmentalists was on a liquid national gas plant proposed for Texas City, just across the channel from Galveston.

Officials said politics had little to do with the lab's location. The facility wound up in Galveston, they claimed, largely because the University of Texas Medical School located there is one of the leading research centers into infectious diseases. They also said extraordinary precautions are in place to prevent any harmful products escaping the lab once it opens next month. That's good because 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.

Personally, I would be nervous having that thing around me, and if a hurricane was approaching that would give me another reason to evacuate in a hurry and not return until the bio hazard folks said it was safe to do.