On Oct. 9, 1918, the Dallas Board of Health agreed to make influenza a reportable disease and to notify the public about its dangers.

As cases mounted in Dallas’s schools, so did they in the city’s hospitals. There were 220 cases listed at Emergency Hospital, with another 200 cases and three deaths at St. Paul’s Sanitarium, a Catholic hospital that had given over many of its beds-including some in a temporary tent hospital erected on the front lawn-to military cases. Twenty-two cases were reported at the Baptist Memorial Sanitarium.

The local chapter of the Red Cross called on any and all volunteer nurses it could to help deal with the growing epidemic; it was able to mobilize 135 graduate nurses, 20 undergraduate nurses, and 19 practical nurses for service in the county. None could be spared for other parts of Texas