While Trump denies climate change, at least 170 hospitals face major flood risks

In Charleston, the capital of West Virginia, where about 50,000 people live in a wide, flat river valley, a severe storm likely would flood five of the city’s six hospitals at once.

At the largest hospital, up to 5 feet of water can reach the emergency room. At the children’s hospital, the river could rise and cut off all exits. At another downtown hospital, floods more than 10 feet high could surround the facility on three sides.

These are some of the results reached by A New investigation for KFF Health News Which examined flood risks in hospitals nationwide using data provided by to understanda company considered a pioneer in the field of flood simulation. The investigation identified 171 hospitals, with nearly 30,000 patient beds from coast to coast, that face the greatest risk of major or serious flooding.

The investigation found increased flood risks at large trauma centers, small rural hospitals, children’s hospitals and long-term care facilities serving older and disabled patients. While coastal flooding threatens many hospitals in low-lying states such as Florida and Texas, many inland hospitals are at risk due to flooding of rivers and streams, especially in Appalachia. Even in the sun-soaked cities and barren expanses of the American West, storms have the potential to flood some hospitals with several feet of pooled water, according to Fathom data.

“The reality is that the risk of flooding is everywhere. It is the most widespread risk,” said Oliver Wing, chief scientific officer at Fathom, who reviewed the results. “Just because you’ve never had an extreme condition before, doesn’t mean you’ll never have one.”

The KFF Health News investigation is among the first to analyze the risk of hospital flooding nationwide in the era of a warming climate and worsening storms. This comes at a time when the administration of President Donald Trump has reduced Federal agencies that forecast and Response to severe weatherdismantling FEMA 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 fraud ever committed in the world“.

Even a small amount of flooding can shut down an unprepared hospital, often by interrupting the power supply needed for life-sustaining equipment such as ventilators and heart monitors.

Charleston Area Medical Center, the health system that runs most of the hospitals in Charleston, said it recognizes the risks of flooding and has taken steps to prepare, such as having a deployable flood wall.

Many other hospitals may not be aware of the flood risks. Of the 171 hospitals at high risk for flooding identified by KFF Health News, one-third are located in areas outside of flood risk zones designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

“This is very concerning,” said Caleb Dresser, who studies climate change and is an emergency room physician and assistant professor at Harvard University. “If you don’t have the information to know you’re at risk, how do you triage the problem?”