These 100 Nursing Homes Face Perilous Flood Risk. Minnesota Shows What Can Happen.

NEW RICHLAND, Minn. — Floodwater seeped through the nursing home’s front door just before sunrise. Inside the New Richland Care Center, staff members rushed to move 36 residents out of the building on Sept. 19 while they still could. They pushed elderly residents in wheelchairs through 4-inch-deep water to buses waiting in the parking lot, said nursing home administrator Robert Johannsen. Inches turned to feet as the last three residents were wheeled out on hospital beds, lifted “as high as they can go” to escape the rising water, Johannsen said. Firefighters and volunteers from a high school football team pushed the beds to safety across the street, he said. “It’s pretty devastating,” Johannsen said of the now-shuttered nursing home. “There was at least 2½ feet of water flowing down the hallways.” The small-town, government-run nursing home is about 100 yards from a drainage ditch in southern Minnesota. It has flooded three times in 16 years, including during the September storm that was large but far from historic, according to the National Weather Service. New Richland is one of 100 U.S. nursing homes that face some of the nation’s worst flood risk — where at least 2 feet of wat...