In West Virginia’s capital of Charleston, where about 50,000 people live in a wide, flat river valley, an intense storm has the potential to flood five of the city’s six hospitals at once.
At the largest hospital, as much as 5 feet of water could reach the emergency room. At the children’s hospital, the river could rise to cut off all exits. And at another hospital in the city center, more than 10 feet of flooding could besiege the facility on three sides.
These are some findings of a new KFF Health News investigation that examined nationwide hospital flood risk using data provided by Fathom, a company considered a leader in flood simulation. The investigation identified 171 hospitals, totaling nearly 30,000 patient beds from coast to coast, that face the greatest risk of significant or dangerous flooding.
The investigation found heightened flood risks at large trauma centers, small rural hospitals, children’s hospitals, and long-term care facilities that serve older and disabled patients. While coastal flooding threatens many hospitals in low-lying states like Florida and Texas, many inland hospitals are at risk from overflowing rivers and streams, particularly in Appalachia. Even in the sun-soaked cities and arid expanses of the American West, storms have the potential to flood some hospitals with several feet of pooling water, according to Fathom’s data.
“The reality is that flood risk is everywhere. It is the most pervasive of perils,” said 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.”
The KFF Health News investigation is among the first to analyze nationwide hospital flood risk in an era of warming climate and worsening storms. It comes as the administration of President Donald Trump has slashed federal agencies that forecast and respond to extreme weather, dismantled Federal Emergency Management Agency programs designed to protect hospitals and other important buildings, and generally dismissed the threat of climate change, which the president recently referred to as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
Even a small amount of flooding could shut down an unprepared hospital, often by interrupting its power supply, which is needed for life-sustaining equipment such as ventilators and heart monitors.
Charleston Area Medical Center, a health system that runs most of the hospitals in Charleston, stated that it is aware of its flood risk and has taken steps to prepare, like acquiring a deployable floodwall.
Many other hospitals could be unaware of their flood risk. Of the 171 hospitals with significant flood risk identified by KFF Health News, one-third are in areas outside flood hazard zones mapped by FEMA.
“This is highly concerning,” said Caleb Dresser, who studies climate change and is both an emergency room doctor and a Harvard University assistant professor. “If you don’t have the information to know you’re at risk, then how can you triage that problem?”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.USE OUR CONTENTThis story can be republished for free (details).
