COASTAL CHALLENGESHurricane Ian Shows That Coastal Hospitals Aren’t Ready for Climate Change

By Daniel Chang and Lauren Sausser

Published 12 October 2022

As rapidly intensifying storms and rising sea levels threaten coastal cities from Texas to the tip of Maine, Hurricane Ian has just demonstrated what researchers have warned: Hundreds of hospitals in the U.S. are not ready for climate change.

As rapidly intensifying storms and rising sea levels threaten coastal cities from Texas to the tip of Maine, Hurricane Ian has just demonstrated what researchers have warned: Hundreds of hospitals in the U.S. are not ready for climate change.

Hurricane Ian forced at least 16 hospitals from central to southwestern Florida to evacuate patients after it made landfall near the city of Fort Myers on Sept. 28 as a deadly Category 4 storm.

Some moved their patients before the storm while others ordered full or partial evacuations after the hurricane damaged their buildings or knocked out power and running water, said Mary Mayhew, president of the Florida Hospital Association, which coordinates needs and resources among hospitals statewide during a hurricane.

About 1,000 patients across five Florida counties were evacuated from hospitals for different reasons, Mayhew said, with one hospital moving patients after the storm tore part of its roof and deluged the ground floor. Other hospitals emerged with no structural damage but lost power and running water. Broken bridges, flooded roads, and lack of clean water all added to the challenge for some hospitals, Mayhew said.

And that’s before considering the need to help those injured in the hurricane and its aftermath.

“Climate shocks like hurricanes show us in the most painful way what we need to fix,” said Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, known as C-CHANGE, at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

As climate change increases the intensity of hurricanes, coastal cities threatened by rising sea levels from Miami to Charleston, South Carolina, have considered billion-dollar storm surge protection plans — from elevating homes to creating a network of seawalls, floodgates, and pumps to protect residents and infrastructure against powerful flooding from storms.

Some hospitals are fortifying buildings and elevating campuses. Others are moving inland, as they prepare for a future when even weak storms unleash flooding that can overrun facilities.

“They’re the front lines of climate change, bearing the costs of these increased weather events as well as the increase in injuries and disease that come with them,” said Emily Mediate, U.S. climate and health director for Health Care Without Harm, a nonprofit that works with hospitals to prepare for climate change.