by Holly Ok. Hacker, Brett Kelman, Daniel Chang, Hannah Norman, Lydia Zuraw
Credit score: CC0 Public Area
When a giant storm hits, Peninsula Hospital could possibly be underwater.
At this decades-old psychiatric hospital on the sting of the Tennessee River, an intense storm may submerge the constructing in 11 ft of water, slicing off all roads across the facility, in accordance with a classy laptop simulation of flood danger.
“My first feeling is doom,” Aurora mentioned as she watched the simulation of the river rising across the hospital. “These are probably some of the most vulnerable people.”
Covenant Well being, which runs Peninsula Hospital, mentioned in an announcement it has a “proactive and thorough approach to emergency planning” however declined to supply particulars or reply questions.
At many of those hospitals, flooding from heavy storms has the potential to jeopardize affected person care, block entry to emergency rooms, and pressure evacuations. Generally there isn’t any different hospital close by.
A lot of this danger to hospitals is just not captured by flood maps issued by the Federal Emergency Administration Company, which have served because the nation’s de facto instrument for flood estimation for half a century, regardless of being incomplete and typically many years outdated.
As FEMA’s maps have turn out to be divorced from the fact of a altering local weather, personal firms like Fathom have crammed the hole with simulations of future floods. However lots of their predictions are behind a paywall, leaving the general public principally reliant on free, considerably restricted authorities maps.
“This is highly concerning,” mentioned Caleb Dresser, who research local weather change and is each an emergency room physician and a Harvard College assistant professor. “If you don’t have the information to know you’re at risk, then how can you triage that problem?”
The deadliest hospital flooding in trendy American historical past occurred 20 years in the past throughout Hurricane Katrina, when the our bodies of 45 folks have been recovered from New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Middle, together with some sufferers whom investigators suspected have been euthanized. Extra flooding deaths have been narrowly averted one yr in the past when helicopters rescued dozens of individuals as Hurricane Helene engulfed Unicoi County Hospital in Erwin, Tennessee.
Rebecca Harrison, a paramedic, known as her youngsters from the Unicoi roof to say goodbye.
The investigation—among the many first to investigate nationwide hospital flood danger in an period of warming local weather and worsening storms—comes because the administration of President Donald Trump has slashed federal companies that forecast and reply to excessive climate and likewise dismantled FEMA packages designed to guard hospitals and different necessary buildings from floods.
When requested to remark, FEMA mentioned flooding is a standard, expensive, and “under-appreciated” catastrophe however made no assertion particular to hospitals. Spokesperson Daniel Llargués defended the administration’s adjustments to FEMA by reissuing an August assertion that dismissed criticism as coming from “bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency.”
Alice Hill, an Obama administration local weather danger skilled, mentioned the Trump administration’s dismissal of local weather change and worsening floods would waste billions of {dollars} and endanger lives.
In 2015, Hill led the creation of the Federal Flood Threat Administration Customary, which required that hospitals and different important buildings be elevated or incorporate additional flood protections to qualify for federal funding.
FEMA stopped imposing the usual in March.
“People will die as a result of some of the choices being made today,” Hill mentioned. “We will be less prepared than we are now. And we were already, in my estimation, poorly prepared.”
‘Flood danger is in all places’
Hospitals have been decided to have a big danger if Fathom’s 100-year flood knowledge predicted {that a} foot or extra of water may attain a substantial portion of their buildings, excluding parking garages, or minimize off street entry to the hospital. A 100-year flood is an intense climate occasion that has roughly a 1% probability of occurring in any given yr however can occur extra usually.
The investigation discovered heightened flood dangers at massive trauma facilities, small rural hospitals, youngsters’s hospitals, and long-term care amenities that serve older and disabled sufferers. Not less than 21 are crucial entry hospitals, with the next-closest hospital 25 miles away, on common.
Flooding threatens dozens of hospitals in coastal areas, together with in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and New York. Farther inland, flooding of rivers or creeks may envelop different hospitals, notably in Appalachia and the Midwest. Even within the sun-soaked cities and arid expanses of the American West, storms have the potential to encompass some hospitals with a number of ft of pooling water, in accordance with Fathom’s knowledge.
These findings are possible an undercount of hospitals in danger as a result of the investigation ignored pockets of potential flooding at some hospitals. It excluded amenities like stand-alone ERs, outpatient clinics, and nursing houses.
“The reality is that flood risk is everywhere. It is the most pervasive of perils,” mentioned Oliver Wing, the chief scientific officer at Fathom, who reviewed the findings. “Just because you’ve never experienced an extreme doesn’t mean you never will.”
Dresser, the ER physician, mentioned even a small quantity of flooding can shut down an unprepared hospital, usually by interrupting its energy provide, which is required for life-sustaining gear like ventilators and coronary heart screens. He mentioned essentially the most susceptible hospitals would possible be in rural areas.
“A lot of rural hospitals are now closing their pediatric units, closing their psychiatry units,” Dresser mentioned. “In a financially stressed situation, it can be hard to prioritize long-term threats, even if they are, for some institutions, potentially existential.”
City hospitals can face harmful flooding, too. Fathom’s knowledge predicts 5 to fifteen ft of water round neighboring hospitals—Kadlec Regional Medical Middle and Lourdes Behavioral Well being—that straddle a tiny creek in Richland, Washington.
By Fathom’s estimate, a 100-year flood may trigger the close by Columbia River to spill over a levee that protects Richland, then loosely comply with the creek to the hospitals. A few of the deepest flooding is estimated round Lourdes, which was constructed on land within the U.S. Military Corps of Engineers put aside in 1961 as a “ponding and drainage easement.”
On the time, this land was presupposed to be able to storing sufficient water to fill not less than 40 Olympic-size swimming swimming pools, in accordance with army paperwork obtained via the Freedom of Data Act. A psychological well being facility has occupied this spot for the reason that Nineteen Seventies.
‘All the weather of an actual catastrophe’
One yr in the past, as Hurricane Helene carved a lethal path throughout Southern Appalachia, Angel Mitchell was visiting her ailing mom at Unicoi County Hospital within the tiny city of Erwin, Tennessee.
Swollen by Helene, the close by Nolichucky River spilled over its banks and across the hospital, which was inbuilt a flood plain. Employees tried to bar the doorways, Mitchell mentioned, however the water bought in, trapping her and others inside. The lights went out. Folks fled to the roof, the place the roar of dashing water almost drowned out the strategy of rescue helicopters, Mitchell mentioned.
In the end, 70 folks from the hospital, together with Mitchell and her mom, have been airlifted to security on Sept. 27, 2024. The hospital stays closed, and the corporate that owns it, Ballad Well being, has mentioned its reopening is unsure.
For instance, within the Cumberland Mountains of southwestern Virginia, a 100-year flood is projected to trigger Slate Creek to engulf Buchanan Normal Hospital in additional than 5 ft of water.
Close to the Nice Lakes in Erie, Pennsylvania, LECOM Medical Middle and Behavioral Well being Pavilion may turn out to be flooded by a small drainage creek that’s lower than 50 ft from the entrance door of the ER.
Neither Buchanan nor LECOM responded to questions on flooding or preparations.
And in West Virginia’s capital of Charleston, the place about 50,000 folks dwell on the junction of two rivers in a large and flat valley, a single storm may probably flood 5 of town’s six hospitals directly, together with colleges, church buildings, fireplace departments, and different amenities.
“I hate to say it,” mentioned Behrang Bidadian, a flood plain supervisor on the West Virginia GIS Technical Middle, “but it has all the elements of a real disaster.”
Shanen Wright, 48, a lifelong Charleston resident who lives close to CAMC Memorial, mentioned many within the metropolis have little fear about flooding within the face of extra speedy issues, just like the opioid epidemic and the decline of producing and mining.
Tugboats and coal barges sail previous his neighborhood as in the event that they have been automobiles on his avenue.
“It’s not to say it’s not a possibility,” he mentioned. “I’m sure the people in Asheville and the people in Texas, where the floods took so many lives, they probably didn’t see it coming either.”
‘The water is coming’
Regardless of huge scientific consensus that local weather change fuels extra harmful climate, the Trump administration has taken the place that issues about world warming are overblown. In a speech to the United Nations in September, Trump known as local weather change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
The Trump administration has made deep employees and funding cuts to FEMA, NOAA, and the Nationwide Climate Service. At FEMA, the cuts prompted 191 present and former staff to publish a letter in August warning that the company is being dismantled from inside.
Daniel Swain, a College of California local weather scientist, mentioned the administration’s rejection of local weather change has left the nation much less ready for excessive climate, now and sooner or later.
“It’s akin to enforcing malpractice scientifically,” Swain mentioned. “Imagine making a medical decision where you are not allowed to look at 20% of the patient’s vital signs or test results.”
Beneath Trump, FEMA has additionally taken actions critics say will go away the nation extra susceptible to flooding, particularly:
•FEMA disbanded the Technical Mapping Advisory Council, which had repeatedly pushed the company to modernize its flood maps to estimate future danger and account for the impacts of local weather change.
•FEMA canceled its Constructing Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which supplied grants to assist communities and important buildings, together with hospitals, shield themselves from floods and different pure disasters.
•And after stopping enforcement early this yr, FEMA intends to rescind the Federal Flood Threat Administration Customary, which was designed to harden buildings in opposition to future floods and save tax {dollars} in the long term.
Berginnis, of the Affiliation of State Floodplain Managers, mentioned the administration’s unwillingness to organize for local weather change and worsening storms would end in a harmful and dear cycle of flooding, rebuilding, and flooding once more.
“The president is saying we are closed for business when it comes to hazard mitigation,” Berginnis mentioned. “It bugs me to no end that we have to have reminders—like people dying—to show us why it’s important to make these investments.”
Few hospitals perceive this risk greater than the previous Coney Island Hospital in New York Metropolis, which has suffered catastrophic flooding earlier than and has ready for it to return once more.
Superstorm Sandy in 2012 pressured the hospital to evacuate tons of of sufferers. When the water receded, fish and a sea turtle have been discovered within the constructing.
Eleven years later, the power reopened as Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hospital, remodeled by a reconstruction undertaking that added a 4-foot floodwall and elevated affected person care areas and utility infrastructure above the primary ground.
It’s now possible one of the vital flood-proofed hospitals within the nation.
However, thus far, no storm has examined the power.
Svetlana Lipyanskaya, CEO of NYC Well being+Hospitals/South Brooklyn Well being, which incorporates the rebuilt hospital, mentioned the query of flooding is “not an if but a when.”
“I hope it doesn’t happen in my lifetime,” she mentioned, “but frankly, I’d be surprised. The water is coming.”
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Not less than 170 US hospitals face main flood danger: Specialists say Trump is making it worse (2025, October 8)
retrieved 8 October 2025
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