While southern states continue to recover from the devastation caused by flooding after Hurricane Helene in September, hospitals are beginning to grapple with future flood risks. Twenty Tennessee hospitals currently exist on or near flood plains, according to a Dec. 30 report in The Tennesseean.
The at-risk hospitals are located across the state in both rural and urban areas. Built between five to 50 years ago, eight are located in moderate- or high-risk flood zones and 12 are located right outside of flood zones, the report found.
Flood risk zones have been designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and are "largely outdated and don't account for current or future conditions" brought on by climate change, underestimating actual flood risks, the report said.
Weeks before Hurricane Helene, the Biden administration finalized a rule to expand building standards and infrastructure projects in 100-year flood plains, though it remains to be seen if the Trump administration will uphold the rule.
Built in 2018, Erwin, Tenn.-based Unicoi County Hospital was hit with 5 inches of rain over several days in September, a fraction of the rain seen by surrounding areas at higher altitudes. The hospital's location next to a river made it susceptible to flooding as the rainfall from those areas drained into rivers downstream, the report said.
Unicoi County Hospital was built on a 500-year flood plain next to a 100-year flood plain, meaning the building and surrounding area had between a 0.2% to 1% chance of flooding in any given year. Despite the health system installing levees to protect the facility years earlier, a lack of upstream river gauges left the hospital unaware of and vulnerable to the flooding that ultimately destroyed the building, and resulted in an emergency helicopter evacuation of 70 patients and staff.
Johnson City, Tenn.-based Ballad Health, operator of the now closed Unicoi County Memorial Hospital, has opened a temporary urgent care center in the community and has plans to rebuild a full-service hospital in the future, Ballad Health chairman and CEO Adam Levine told the outlet.
Read the full report here.