GALVESTON — Because Hurricane Ike knocked out Galveston’s trauma center, the county’s health district has ordered extra medical personnel, including ambulances and a transport helicopter, to stage on the island for its seventh annual Lone Star motorcycle rally.

Ike’s Sept. 13 landfall caused severe flooding and damaged much of the upper Texas coast, delaying the rally for more than a month. The University of Texas Medical Branch sustained $700 million in damages and expenses as a result of the storm.

The Medical Branch was operating Wednesday not as a hospital, but as an urgent care facility, incapable of treating patients suffering from traumatic injuries, such as motorcycle accidents, said Brian Zachariah, director of the hospital’s emergency department.

Since the storm, medical helicopters land daily on the island, flying wreck victims and others suffering injuries or medical episodes to trauma centers in Houston.

The Medical Branch will have an emergency room doctor on staff, but there will be no general surgeon on call or doctors available that specialize in head injuries or broken bones, Zachariah said.

For that reason, the county’s health district, which operates the city’s ambulance service, took measures to ensure quick access to medical care, especially with the potential of having thousands of motorcycle riders arriving on the island today through Sunday.

In addition to normal staffing, the health district will have two ambulances at The Strand district’s staging point of the rally and a third ambulance on the seawall, said Kurt Koopmann, a health district spokesman.

“Landing zones have been designated for air medical access and one air unit will be staged on the island to minimize response times,” Koopmann said.

The increased staffing is needed, because the medical branch is not fully functional, Koopmann said.

The rally’s organizer, Ron Limbock, said he is ready for a safe weekend in Galveston, such as last year’s event where there were no fatalities on the island.

He said he thought the health district’s ambulance coverage would be adequate, noting it put together a good plan.

“This is the fourth time we’ve been affected by a hurricane and the second time it’s been moved to a new date, because of a hurricane,” Limbock said. “The previous time was from lovely Rita, which was a lot nicer to us than Ike.”

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