The authors note that the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care Center in New Orleans, built to replace a hospital that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, is a good model for how hospitals coastal areas can improve resilience to storms. The facility has a backup fuel supply and on-site wastewater treatment, and its critical electrical and mechanical equipment is at least 20 feet above a 100-year floodplain, or the area to be flooded. severe flooding.
However, the researchers stress that hospital preparation should not stop at making individual hospitals more resilient. Dr Bernstein said even if hospital buildings weren’t flooded, the roads leading to them could still separate a functioning hospital from patients trying to reach.
In 18 of the metropolitan areas, at least half of the roads within a mile of hospitals were at risk of flooding from Category 2 hurricanes, the researchers said. Auroop R. Ganguly, professor in the department Geology and civil engineering at Northeastern University, who was not involved in the study, said the hospital cannot be “a resilient island in a fragile ocean.
Bernstein also emphasized that healthcare providers in some large cities, such as New York, Boston and Philadelphia, may face a much higher risk than expected. Because of the location of hospitals and the number of hospital beds relative to the population they serve, when a hurricane hits, there will be “more people looking for fewer beds,” he said.
Kristie L. Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington’s Center for Global Health and Environment, said the study contributes to a better understanding of how to describe the damage a hurricane can do to communities. that it attacks. research.
For example, it is often assumed that most of a hurricane’s damage comes from high winds, says Dr Ebi, but in reality, flooding has a much larger effect on life and property, both during the storm. and its consequences. .
