{"id":8634,"date":"2025-10-01T10:01:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T10:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=8634"},"modified":"2025-10-01T10:01:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T10:01:00","slug":"at-least-170-us-hospitals-face-major-flood-risk-experts-say-trump-is-making-it-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=8634","title":{"rendered":"At Least 170 US Hospitals Face Major Flood Risk. Experts Say Trump Is Making It Worse."},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/09\/Video_Hospital-Flood-Risk_Grid.mp4<\/a><\/p>\n

LOUISVILLE, Tenn. \u2014 When a big storm hits, Peninsula Hospital could be underwater.<\/p>\n

At this decades-old psychiatric hospital on the edge of the Tennessee River, an intense storm could submerge the building in 11 feet of water, cutting off all roads around the facility, according to a sophisticated computer simulation of flood risk.<\/p>\n

Aurora, a young woman who was committed to Peninsula as a teenager, said the hospital sits so close to the river that it felt like a moat keeping her and dozens of other patients inside. KFF Health News agreed not to publish her full name because she shared private medical history.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first feeling is doom,\u201d Aurora said as she watched the simulation of the river rising around the hospital. \u201cThese are probably some of the most vulnerable people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Covenant Health, which runs Peninsula Hospital, said in a statement it has a \u201cproactive and thorough approach to emergency planning\u201d but declined to provide details or answer questions.<\/p>\n

Peninsula is one of about 170 American hospitals, totaling nearly 30,000 patient beds from coast to coast, that face the greatest risk of significant or dangerous flooding, according to a months-long KFF Health News investigation based on data provided by Fathom, a company considered a leader in flood simulation. At many of these hospitals, flooding from heavy storms has the potential to jeopardize patient care, block access to emergency rooms, and force evacuations. Sometimes there is no other hospital nearby.<\/p>\n

Much of this risk to hospitals is not captured by flood maps issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which have served as the nation\u2019s de facto tool for flood estimation for half a century, despite being incomplete and sometimes decades out of date. As FEMA\u2019s maps have become divorced from the reality of a changing climate, private companies like Fathom have filled the gap with simulations of future floods. But many of their predictions are behind a paywall, leaving the public mostly reliant on free, significantly limited government maps.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is highly concerning,\u201d said Caleb Dresser, who studies climate change and is both an emergency room doctor and a Harvard University assistant professor. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have the information to know you\u2019re at risk, then how can you triage that problem?\u201d<\/p>\n

The deadliest hospital flooding in modern American history occurred 20 years ago during Hurricane Katrina, when the bodies of 45 people were recovered from New Orleans\u2019 Memorial Medical Center, including some patients whom investigators suspected were <\/a>euthanized<\/a>. More flooding deaths were narrowly avoided one year ago when helicopters rescued dozens of people<\/a> as Hurricane Helene engulfed Unicoi County Hospital in Erwin, Tennessee.<\/p>\n

Rebecca Harrison, a paramedic, called her children from the Unicoi roof to say goodbye.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was scared to death, thinking, \u2018This is it,\u2019\u201d Harrison told CBS News, which interviewed Unicoi survivors as part of KFF Health News\u2019 investigation. \u201cAlarms were going off. People were screaming. It was chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

The investigation \u2014 among the first to analyze nationwide hospital flood risk in an era of warming climate and worsening storms \u2014 comes as the administration of President Donald Trump has slashed federal agencies that forecast<\/a> and respond to extreme weather<\/a> and also dismantled FEMA programs designed to protect hospitals and other important buildings from floods.<\/p>\n

When asked to comment, FEMA said flooding is a common, costly, and \u201cunder appreciated\u201d disaster but made no statement specific to hospitals. Spokesperson Daniel Llargu\u00e9s defended the administration\u2019s changes to FEMA by reissuing an August statement that dismissed criticism as coming from \u201cbureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alice Hill, an Obama administration climate risk expert, said the Trump administration\u2019s dismissal of climate change and worsening floods would waste billions of dollars and endanger lives.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Hill led the creation of the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, which required that hospitals and other essential structures be elevated or incorporate extra flood protections to qualify for federal funding.<\/p>\n

FEMA\u00a0stopped enforcing<\/a>\u00a0the standard in March.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will die as a result of some of the choices being made today,\u201d Hill said. \u201cWe will be less prepared than we are now. And we already were, in my estimation, poorly prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Flood Risk Is Everywhere\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The KFF Health News investigation identified more than 170 hospitals facing a flood risk by comparing the locations of more than 7,000 facilities to peer-reviewed flood hazard mapping provided by Fathom<\/a>, a United Kingdom company that simulates flooding in spaces as small as 10 meters using laser-precision elevation measurements from the U.S. Geological Survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hospitals were determined to have a significant risk if Fathom\u2019s 100-year flood data predicted that a foot or more of water could reach a considerable portion of their buildings, excluding parking garages, or cut off road access to the hospital. A 100-year flood is an intense weather event that has roughly a 1% chance of occurring in any given year but can happen more often.<\/p>\n

The investigation found heightened flood risks at large trauma centers, small rural hospitals, children\u2019s hospitals, and long-term care facilities that serve older and disabled patients. At least 21 are critical access hospitals, with the next-closest hospital 25 miles away, on average.<\/p>\n

Flooding threatens dozens of hospitals in coastal areas, including in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and New York. Farther inland, flooding of rivers or creeks could envelop other hospitals, particularly in Appalachia and the Midwest. Even in the sun-soaked cities and arid expanses of the American West, storms have the potential to surround some hospitals with several feet of pooling water, according to Fathom\u2019s data.<\/p>\n

These findings are likely an undercount of hospitals at risk because the investigation overlooked pockets of potential flooding at some hospitals. It excluded facilities like stand-alone ERs, outpatient clinics, and nursing homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is that flood risk is everywhere. It is the most pervasive of perils,\u201d said Oliver Wing, the chief scientific officer at Fathom, who reviewed the findings. \u201cJust because you\u2019ve never experienced an extreme doesn\u2019t mean you never will.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dresser, the ER doctor, said even a small amount of flooding can shut down an unprepared hospital, often by interrupting its power supply, which is needed for life-sustaining equipment like ventilators and heart monitors. He said the most vulnerable hospitals would likely be in rural areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of rural hospitals are now closing their pediatric units, closing their psychiatry units,\u201d Dresser said. \u201cIn a financially stressed situation, it can be hard to prioritize long-term threats, even if they are, for some institutions, potentially existential.\u201d<\/p>\n

Urban hospitals can face dangerous flooding, too. Fathom\u2019s data predicts 5 to 15 feet of water around neighboring hospitals \u2014 Kadlec Regional Medical Center and Lourdes Behavioral Health \u2014 that straddle a tiny creek in Richland, Washington.<\/p>\n

By Fathom\u2019s estimate, a 100-year flood could cause the nearby Columbia River to spill over a levee that protects Richland, then loosely follow the creek to the hospitals. Some of the deepest flooding is estimated around Lourdes, which was built on land the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers set aside in 1961 as a \u201cponding and drainage easement.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, this land was supposed to be capable of storing enough water to fill at least 40 Olympic-size swimming pools, according to military documents<\/a> obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. A mental health facility has occupied this spot since the 1970s.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/09\/Video_Hospital-Flood-Risk_Kadlec.mp4<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u2018All the Elements of a Real Disaster\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

One year ago, as Hurricane Helene carved a deadly path across Southern Appalachia, Angel Mitchell was visiting her ailing mother at Unicoi County Hospital in the tiny town of Erwin, Tennessee.<\/p>\n

Swollen by Helene, the nearby Nolichucky River spilled over its banks and around the hospital, which was built in a flood plain. Staff tried to bar the doors, Mitchell said, but the water got in, trapping her and others inside. The lights went out. People fled to the roof, where the roar of rushing water nearly drowned out the approach of rescue helicopters, Mitchell said.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, 70 people from the hospital, including Mitchell and her mother, were airlifted to safety<\/a> on Sept. 27, 2024. The hospital remains closed, and the company that owns it, Ballad Health<\/a>, has said its reopening is uncertain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy allow something \u2014 especially a hospital \u2014 to be built in an area like that?\u201d Mitchell told CBS News. \u201cPeople have to rely on these areas to get medical help, and they\u2019re dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Beyond Unicoi, KFF Health News identified 39 inland hospitals \u2014 including 16 in Appalachia \u2014 that Fathom predicts could flood when nearby rivers, creeks, or drainage canals overspill their banks, even in storms far less intense than Helene.<\/p>\n

For example, in the Cumberland Mountains of southwestern Virginia, a 100-year flood is projected to cause Slate Creek to engulf Buchanan General Hospital in more than 5 feet of water.<\/p>\n

Near the Great Lakes in Erie, Pennsylvania, LECOM Medical Center and Behavioral Health Pavilion could become flooded by a small drainage creek that is less than 50 feet from the front door of the ER.<\/p>\n

Neither Buchanan nor LECOM responded to questions about flooding or preparations.<\/p>\n

And in West Virginia\u2019s capital of Charleston, where about 50,000 people live at the junction of two rivers in a wide and flat valley, a single storm could potentially flood five of the city\u2019s six hospitals at once, along with schools, churches, fire departments, and other facilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate to say it,\u201d said Behrang Bidadian, a flood plain manager at the West Virginia GIS Technical Center<\/a>, \u201cbut it has all the elements of a real disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/09\/Video_Hospital-Flood-Risk_CharlestonWV.mp4<\/a><\/p>\n

Shanen Wright, 48, a lifelong Charleston resident who lives near CAMC Memorial, said many in the city have little worry about flooding in the face of more immediate problems, like the opioid epidemic and the decline of manufacturing and mining.<\/p>\n

Tugboats and coal barges sail past his neighborhood as if they were cars on his street.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not to say it\u2019s not a possibility,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m sure the people in Asheville and the people in Texas, where the floods took so many lives, they probably didn\u2019t see it coming either.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The Water Is Coming\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite wide scientific consensus that climate change fuels more dangerous weather, the Trump administration has taken the position<\/a> that concerns about global warming are overblown. In a speech to the United Nations in September, Trump called climate change \u201cthe greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has made deep staff and funding cuts to FEMA, NOAA, and the National Weather Service. At FEMA, the cuts prompted 191 current and former employees to publish a letter<\/a> in August warning that the agency is being dismantled from within.<\/p>\n

Daniel Swain, a University of California climate scientist, said the administration\u2019s rejection of climate change has left the nation less prepared for extreme weather, now and in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s akin to enforcing malpractice scientifically,\u201d Swain said. \u201cImagine making a medical decision where you are not allowed to look at 20% of the patient\u2019s vital signs or test results.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Trump, FEMA has also taken actions critics say will leave the nation more vulnerable to flooding, specifically:<\/p>\n

FEMA disbanded the Technical Mapping Advisory Council, which had repeatedly pushed the agency<\/a> to modernize its flood maps to estimate future risk and account for the impacts of climate change.<\/p>\n

FEMA canceled its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities<\/a> program, which provided grants to help communities and vital buildings, including hospitals, protect themselves from floods and other natural disasters.<\/p>\n

And after stopping enforcement early this year, FEMA intends to rescind<\/a> the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, which was designed to harden buildings against future floods and save tax dollars in the long run.<\/p>\n

Berginnis, of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, said the administration\u2019s unwillingness to prepare for climate change and worsening storms would result in a dangerous and costly cycle of flooding, rebuilding, and flooding again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president is saying we are closed for business when it comes to hazard mitigation,\u201d Berginnis said. \u201cIt bugs me to no end that we have to have reminders \u2014 like people dying \u2014 to show us why it\u2019s important to make these investments.\u201d<\/p>\n

FEMA did not answer specific questions about these decisions. In the statement to KFF Health News, spokesperson Llargu\u00e9s touted the administration\u2019s response to flooding in Texas and New Mexico and said FEMA had provided billions of dollars to help people and communities recover and rebuild. He did not mention any FEMA funding for protecting against future floods.<\/p>\n

Few hospitals understand this threat more than the former Coney Island Hospital in New York City, which has suffered catastrophic flooding before and has prepared for it to come again.<\/p>\n

Superstorm Sandy in 2012 forced the hospital to evacuate hundreds of patients. When the water receded, fish and a sea turtle were found in the building.<\/p>\n

Eleven years later, the facility reopened as Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hospital, transformed by a FEMA-funded $923 million reconstruction project that added a 4-foot floodwall and elevated patient care areas and utility infrastructure above the first floor.<\/p>\n

It is now likely one of the most flood-proofed hospitals in the nation.<\/p>\n

But, so far, no storm has tested the facility.<\/p>\n

Svetlana Lipyanskaya, CEO of NYC Health+Hospitals\/South Brooklyn Health, which includes the rebuilt hospital, said the question of flooding is \u201cnot an if but a when.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope it doesn\u2019t happen in my lifetime,\u201d she said, \u201cbut frankly, I\u2019d be surprised. The water is coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Methodology<\/h4>\n

After Hurricane Helene made landfall a year ago, a raging river flooded a rural hospital in eastern Tennessee. Patients and employees were rescued from the rooftop. Floods have hit hospitals from New York to Nebraska to Texas in recent years. We wanted to determine how many other U.S. hospitals face similar peril. Ultimately, we found more than 170 hospitals at risk.<\/p>\n

For this analysis, we used data from Fathom<\/a>, a United Kingdom-based company that specializes in flood-risk modeling across the globe. 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 <\/a>and used by insurance companies<\/a>, the World Bank, the Nature Conservancy, and government agencies in Florida, Texas, and elsewhere. The Iowa Flood Center has validated Fathom\u2019s U.S. data<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Through a data use agreement, Fathom shared its 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 three main types<\/a> of flooding: coastal, fluvial (from overflowing rivers, lakes, or streams), and pluvial (rainfall that the ground can\u2019t absorb). The data also accounts for dams, reservoirs, and other structures that defend against floods.<\/p>\n

To identify at-risk hospitals, we used a publicly available Department of Homeland Security database containing the GPS coordinates of more than 7,000 short-term acute, critical access, rehab, and psychiatric hospitals \u2014 basically any hospital with inpatient services. (DHS under the Trump administration has discontinued public access to the database, so data for hospitals and other infrastructure is no longer widely available.)<\/p>\n

Using GPS coordinates as the centerpoint, we created a circle with a 150-yard radius around each hospital, which in most cases captured the building plus nearby grounds and access roads. We then mapped Fathom\u2019s flood-risk data to see where it overlapped with these circles. We started by looking for hospitals 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 320 hospitals across the U.S.<\/p>\n

From there, we visually inspected those hospitals using mapping software and Google Maps, both satellite and street view. We trimmed our list to only the hospitals where a considerable portion of the building or all access roads were predicted to have at least a foot of flooding.<\/p>\n

If two hospitals were mapped to the same building \u2014 for instance, a small rehab facility within a large hospital \u2014 we counted only one hospital. We also excluded hospitals recently converted to nursing homes or for other uses.<\/p>\n

We ended up with a list of 171 hospitals across the U.S. That is most likely an undercount. Some hospitals could still face significant impact from flooding that is not deep enough or widespread enough to fit our methodology. Our analysis also does not account for how flooding farther from a hospital could affect employees or patients. And it does not assess what steps hospitals may have already taken to prepare for severe weather events.<\/p>\n

We also ran a spatial analysis comparing Fathom\u2019s data with flood hazard maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which in many cases are incomplete or haven\u2019t been updated in years. We found that about a third of hospitals identified as flood risks by Fathom\u2019s data did not overlap at all with FEMA\u2019s 100- or 500-year hazard areas.<\/p>\n

Fathom provided guidance and feedback as we developed our analysis.<\/p>\n

CBS News <\/em>correspondent David Schechter and photojournalist Chance Horner <\/em>contributed to this report.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\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>.<\/p>\n

USE OUR CONTENT<\/h3>\n

This story can be republished for free (details<\/a>).<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/09\/Video_Hospital-Flood-Risk_Grid.mp4 LOUISVILLE, Tenn. \u2014 When a big storm hits, Peninsula Hospital could be underwater. At this decades-old psychiatric hospital on the edge of the Tennessee River, an intense storm could submerge the building in 11 feet of water, cutting off all roads around the facility, according to a sophisticated computer simulation of flood risk. Aurora,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8634","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\/8634"}],"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=8634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}