were evacuated<\/a> from the five-story Munster Med Inn during Hurricane Ike in 2008. Members of the National Guard carried some residents down flights of stairs in the dark.<\/p>\nRescuers from the Indiana National Guard and the Munster Fire Department evacuate a resident of the Munster Med Inn in Indiana, in the wake of Hurricane Ike in 2008. More than 150 residents were evacuated, according to a U.S. Army news release. (Michael B. Krieg\/Indiana National Guard)<\/p>\n
Then there is the New Richland Care Center. Local media reports show it was evacuated due to flooding in 2010 and 2016, then partially surrounded by floodwater in 2023, before the Sept. 19 evacuation.<\/p>\n
Storms dropped 4 to 8 inches of rain on much of southeastern Minnesota the day before, setting off widespread flooding, said National Weather Service meteorologist Brennan Dettmann. The rainfall was heavy for September but would not have been out of place in July, he said.<\/p>\n
It was too much for New Richland. Storm runoff from nearby farms pooled in a low-lying baseball diamond at the edge of town before swamping nearby streets. Johannsen, the nursing home administrator, said maintenance workers who were trying to fix sewer drains called him in the middle of the night to warn about flooding in the park across the street.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said, \u2018You need to come in. The water is rising,\u2019\u201d Johannsen said. \u201cAt that point, I think the water was a good 30 feet away from the building. I wasn\u2019t really concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n
The New Richland Care Center in southeastern Minnesota flooded on Sept. 19, forcing the evacuation of 36 residents. Some residents were pushed on hospital beds through feet of floodwater to escape the facility, administrator Robert Johannsen says. (WCCO\/CBS Minnesota)<\/p>\n
Wing, the Fathom scientist, said the danger should have been obvious. Although Minnesota\u2019s natural landscape once would have absorbed heavy rains, the farmland around New Richland funnels runoff into creeks and ditches that lead to a low-lying bowl near the nursing home. It\u2019s almost as if the location is designed to flood, Wing said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe choice has been made that we don\u2019t want water in our crop fields. We want it in the nursing homes of vulnerable people,\u201d Wing said. \u201cThat\u2019s the choice that has been made, politically, in that part of Minnesota.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inside the ruined nursing home, receding floodwaters left behind knee-high watermarks, mud-smeared floors, and a lingering smell that Johannsen said reminded him of growing up on a farm. Water destroyed treasured photo albums left behind in a low cabinet, he said.<\/p>\n
Johannsen said the nursing home \u2014 which, with 85 employees, is one of the largest employers in town \u2014 will be closed for five months to a year for repairs. He said all its residents were moved into a school gymnasium and have been resettled across about nine area nursing homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an awful experience that I hope nobody ever has to go through. Because these people lost homes,\u201d Johannsen said. \u201cMy staff is losing their jobs. And I don\u2019t know what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Richland Care Center administrator Robert Johannsen (left) examines the damaged nursing home in the wake of a Sept. 19 flood that forced the evacuation of 36 residents. Johannsen says the facility will be closed for months for repairs. (WCCO\/CBS Minnesota)<\/p>\n
Methodology<\/p>\n
\n
For this analysis, we used data from Fathom, a United Kingdom-based company that specializes in flood-risk modeling worldwide. To assess the United States\u2019 vulnerability, Fathom uses sophisticated computer simulations and detailed terrain data covering the country. It accounts for environmental factors such as climate change, soil conditions, and many rivers and creeks not mapped by other sources. Fathom\u2019s modeling has been peer-reviewed and used by insurance companies, the World Bank Group, the Nature Conservancy, and government agencies in Florida, Texas, and elsewhere. The Iowa Flood Center has validated Fathom\u2019s U.S. data.<\/p>\n
Through a data use agreement, Fathom shared U.S. mapping data that predicts areas with at least a 1% chance of flooding in any given year. Fathom\u2019s data estimates the effects of coastal, fluvial, and pluvial flooding and accounts for dams, reservoirs, and other structures that defend against floods.<\/p>\n
To identify at-risk nursing homes, we used a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services database to map more than 14,000 nursing homes. With GPS coordinates as the center point, we created a circle with a 100-yard radius around each nursing home, which in most cases captured the building and nearby grounds. We then mapped Fathom\u2019s flood-risk data to see where it overlapped with these circles. We started by looking for nursing homes where at least 20% of the circle\u2019s area had a predicted flood depth of at least 1 foot. That gave us an initial list of more than 750 nursing homes.<\/p>\n
Then we visually inspected those facilities using mapping software and Google Maps to confirm that floodwaters were predicted to reach or surround the buildings. We trimmed our list to the 100 nursing homes where the most flooding was predicted, with additional weight given to deeper water.<\/p>\n
Our analysis does not account for how flooding beyond a nursing home\u2019s footprint could still affect employees or patients. And it does not assess what steps facilities may have already taken to prepare for severe weather events.<\/p>\n
Fathom provided guidance and feedback as we developed our analysis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nThis article<\/a> first appeared on KFF Health News<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW RICHLAND, Minn. \u2014 Floodwater seeped through the nursing home\u2019s front door just before sunrise. Inside the New Richland Care Center, staff members rushed to move 36 residents out of the building on Sept. 19 while they still could. They pushed elderly residents in wheelchairs through 4-inch-deep water to buses waiting in the parking lot,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}