September 2, 2017

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Business September 2, 2017

The Reason Behind The Recent Spike In Gas Prices

Motorists are finding that the average price of a gallon of gasoline is 20 cents more than it was a month ago — the highest it’s been in two years. The reasons have a lot to do with Hurricane Harvey.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

We’ll be checking in throughout the hour with people who’ve been affected by this storm in all kinds of ways. And even if you don’t live in the Southeast or have family there, you might be one of them if you plan to hit the road this Labor Day weekend. Motorists are finding that the average price of a gallon of gasoline is 20 cents higher than it was a month ago. It’s the highest it’s been in two years, and the reasons have a lot to do with Hurricane Harvey. NPR’s Jim Zarroli is here to explain this. Jim, thanks so much.

JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: Hi.

MARTIN: So you were telling us that Harvey is affecting the energy markets profoundly. Why is that?

ZARROLI: Well, the problem is the refineries. I mean, there are a lot of them along the coast of Texas and Louisiana. The biggest refining facility is in Port Arthur, Texas. And it’s not so much that there was damage to these refineries, but when the storm was approaching, some of them had to be shut down. And just because of the way they are technologically – they’re complex facilities – they can’t be sort of restarted on a dime. So we’ve lost, you know, nearly 17 percent of total U.S. refining capacity.

And in the meantime, you’re seeing long lines at gas stations. And some gas stations are even running out of gas altogether. Yesterday, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, assured his state that it still has plenty of gasoline and it’s not going to run out. But there are shortages right now.

MARTIN: Now, the refineries are in the Gulf of Mexico. How does that affect the rest of the country?

ZARROLI: The infrastructure in the Gulf serves the rest of the country. I mean, the oil in places like Port Arthur is refined into gasoline that’s used in the Midwest and in the Northeast. There’s also been a problem with pipelines. Some of them have had to be shut down, like the Colonial Pipeline goes from Houston to North Carolina. Part of that had to be shut down. And that just means less gasoline in places like Chicago and New York.

Then also you had, you know, you’ve had less oil being imported because shipping has been interrupted. And when you have this major disruption, oil companies shift production around a lot. That’s another thing. They want to make sure it goes where it’s most needed. So this is really felt all over the place.

MARTIN: So is the government taking any steps to address these supply problems that we’re seeing? Is there anything the government can do?

ZARROLI: The Department of Energy has taken some temporary steps. It’s waived some of the clean air requirements on gasoline. It says that should help get supplies moving faster. It’s also released some oil from the strategic petroleum reserves into a big refinery in Lake Charles, La., that was having some trouble getting the crude it needed. Of course, the company that owns it is going to have to, you know, make up for that later on by returning some oil to the reserves.

MARTIN: So how long before supplies return to normal levels?

ZARROLI: You know, it’s going to be a few weeks, maybe the end of the month. The companies are still assessing how much damage, if any, their facilities have have sustained. We’re starting to see some recovery already. The port of Corpus Christi, you know, has reopened its shipping channel. That means the refineries there can start to get back on line as early as this weekend. But in the meantime, you know, we could see prices going up for a while. We don’t know how much, but they should go up – continue to go up.

MARTIN: That’s NPR’s Jim Zarroli. Jim, thank you.

ZARROLI: You’re welcome.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN AND DOUBLE TROUBLE’S “TEXAS FLOOD”)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Sports September 2, 2017

Saturday Sports: The Astros

NPR’s Scott Simon talks with Howard Bryant of ESPN and ESPN The Magazine about a couple of blockbuster trades and the role of sports in healing traumatized communities.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Time now for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: Baseball is back in Houston this weekend with a doubleheader today, the Astros versus the Mets. And the Stroh’s may have acquired a game changer, indeed. Howard Bryant of ESPN and ESPN the Magazine joins us. Good morning, Howard.

HOWARD BRYANT: Good morning, Scott. How are you?

SIMON: I’m fine, thanks. As the floodwaters began to recede Thursday, just before midnight, the Astros signed – landed, traded for a six-time All Star Justin Verlander, the great pitcher from the Detroit Tigers. How does this improve their chances in the playoffs and maybe beyond?

BRYANT: Well, it certainly improves them. It’s – when you get a guy like Justin Verlander, I think one of the great things about these deals, especially at this time of the year, is it tells everybody on your team and in your fan base that we’re here to win the World Series. We’re not here to make the playoffs. Obviously, they’ve had a great year. They’ve got the best record in the league for virtually the entire season. The message is that there’s only one outcome for us this year, and that’s to win it all.

And so when you have a guy like Verlander and you’ve got McCullers and you’ve got Keuchel, you’ve got the pitching staff that nobody wants to go through. And it’s a wonderful deal for Houston because, once again, the Astros have been to the World Series once. They lost to the White Sox in 2005. And they were close a couple of years ago – didn’t get there. They lost in the ALCS.

And so right now this is the kind of deal that sports fans love. You want your team to try to win. You care about it. And now the organization is showing that they are doing everything they can to bring you a championship.

SIMON: It’s impossible not to wonder if the Astros are going to play with an extra spark of intensity following Hurricane Harvey. Now is that just romantic nonsense on the part of us fans?

BRYANT: Yeah. You know, Scott it is. And I try at times – I’m conflicted about it quite constantly, to be honest. And I feel like, here we go. The minute the hurricane hit, I thought we were going back to the Katrina narrative or we’re going back to the narrative when the economy crashed in Michigan. You know, Michigan state lets, you know, win it for Michigan or win it for New Orleans. Or – I think that that trivializes what’s really taking place right now.

The Houston Astros in the scope of the devastation there, when you look at those photos, when you see what’s happening and you’re dealing with people whose lives are going to have – it’s going to take months and years to put them back together – it’s insignificant. It means nothing.

On the other hand, there is value in giving people who are dealing with a lot of devastation, a lot of pain, whether it’s in your life personally or whether it’s a national – natural disaster, to give them something that makes them feel good. And baseball does that.

SIMON: We were both in New York in the days after 9/11. I will never forget the tangible electricity of those October games at Yankee Stadium…

BRYANT: Oh, I was there, absolutely.

SIMON: …The cop who sang “God Bless America,” Frank Sinatra’s, you know, recording “New York, New York,” or the team pulling the mayor around the field. I mean, I’m not a Yankees fan, but I sold it each time they won that fall. I like to think that made some small difference.

BRYANT: Well, exactly, you had to feel that. I talked to Joe Torre about this, who was the manager of the Yankees at the time, just a few weeks ago. And he was telling me about after the towers fell, they went to the armory to just be supportive. And they walked in. And I think Joe was there and Willie Randolph. And Dawn Zimmer, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams were all there.

And Joe walked around. And he thought, this is stupid. I don’t belong here. These people – you know, all the pictures were on the walls trying to find their loved ones. And he said, I don’t belong here. Why are we here?

And then Bernie Williams walked over and said to a woman that, I don’t have anything to say. I don’t know what to say to you. But you look like you need a hug. And he gave her a hug. And everybody then broke – that broke the ice. And everyone came over to the Yankees to see them as their heroes.

And then Joe said, I do realize now that we have a job to do. That this is important to people. And we have to give them something to be happy about within all of this. And it changed his mind about the value of what they could bring to the people of New York.

SIMON: Yeah. And we’ll just note on our way out, a lot of Houston athletes have publicly stepped up in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

BRYANT: Yeah. J.J. Watt, $15 million he’s raised in a week.

SIMON: Howard Bryant of ESPN, thanks so much for joining us.

BRYANT: Oh, my pleasure.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Health September 2, 2017

In A Houston Emergency Room, It Was A Week Like No Other

Dr. Winston Watkins, an internist at St. Joseph Medical Center in Houston, volunteered to do a shift in the ER to give his colleagues a break.

Rachel Osier Lindley/KERA

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Rachel Osier Lindley/KERA

St. Joseph Medical Center is downtown Houston’s only hospital, located just down the street from the convention center where thousands of evacuees have been staying since Harvey hit.

As of Friday, some doctors and nurses have been on the clock for almost a full week.

Trent Tankersley, director of emergency services at St. Joseph Medical Center in downtown Houston, had a very long work week, as did many of his colleagues.

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When you’re working in an ER during a major natural disaster, nothing is routine. Trent Tankersley, director of emergency services at St. Joseph Medical Center, describes one tense situation after another in the hospital this week.

“We had a lady who the only vehicle heavy enough and strong enough to get to her through the floodwaters was a dump truck. She was pregnant. She was in labor. She was brought to the hospital in the dump bed of a dump truck, soaking wet.

“As we were getting her over to the women’s building to get taken care of, we had a trauma come in. Shortly after that, we had a young man [who] came in that was having a stroke.”

Tankersley showed up to work Saturday, and hasn’t had what you’d consider “a break” since.

“Finally got to go home last night for a couple hours and do some laundry and then came right back. So it’s been an interesting five or six days.”

Some staff haven’t been home since before Harvey struck

Kristen Benjamin, an associate chief nursing officer, has been right beside Tankersley.

“I think we’re all working on adrenaline right now. We’re working shift by shift. Some people are doing 15-, 16-hour shifts. We let them go off and sleep. They come back in.”

Kristen Benjamin, associate chief nursing officer at St. Joseph Medical Center, says many employees hadn’t been home to see if their houses were flooded.

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They’ve seen more than 600 patients in the first five days. At times, they saw more patients in a few hours than they usually would in a whole day.

Many staffers have been stuck at the hospital, with no clear path to their homes. As floodwaters recede, their coworkers can finally come back.

“We’re going to start transitioning staff out to get home so that they can check on their homes,” Benjamin says. “Because some of them don’t even know what’s happening at their house right now because they haven’t been home since Friday. So I don’t even really have an idea if their house has been flooded or not.”

His first day working in the ER

Among those staffing the ER are doctors from other departments pitching in, and even medical students, like Diana Johnson. She and her classmates are using a Google spreadsheet to organize shifts to help.

She’s in her third year at Houston’s McGovern Medical school. She’s assisting Dr. Winston Watkins, an internist on his first day in the ER.

“One of the first patients that came in happened to be one of my own patients from my practice, and he came in with his foot hurting,” he says.”So Diana evaluated him and it turns out he has gangrene of his right fourth toe. And so we’re going to admit him to the hospital.”

“Some of them don’t even know what’s happening at their house right now because they haven’t been home since Friday.”

His house is underwater

Nurse Aaron Padron says he’s never seen such a wide range of emotions in the ER.

“A lot of laughter crying yelling, tears,” he says. “People that you work with you think that wouldn’t crack just put their head in their hands and take a second to cry to themselves, or not to themselves, and wipe away the tears and get back to work.”

He’s been working here for most of the last week, except Saturday night.

Aaron Padron, an emergency room nurse, says hospital employees were much more emotional, reflecting the stresses on everyone in the city.

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“I went home on Saturday to sort of rescue my family before the floods got too high for me to get in or out,” he says. “And then I came back Sunday and I’ve been working and sleeping here ever since.”

Neighbors say his house is underwater. He says several others working in the ER saw their homes flooded. In a way, he says, it’s all been a transformational experience.

“I think times of crisis, in times of emergency, in times of stress really have a way to bring people together and create a lot of camaraderie and really can push people to excel at what they do,” he says.

Once reinforcements come in, he’ll be able to rotate off his shift and find out just how much his family lost.

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