{"id":787093,"date":"2026-07-27T10:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T10:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/787093\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T10:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T10:00:12","slug":"hospitals-in-the-upshur-lewis-counties-flood-zone-lean-on-crisis-plans-to-maintain-operations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/787093\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospitals in the Upshur, Lewis counties flood zone lean on crisis plans to maintain operations"},"content":{"rendered":"

WESTON, W.Va. \u2014 Both hospitals in the flood zone in North Central West Virginia enacted disaster plans and maintained operations through during the flood last Tuesday and continue services in the aftermath.<\/p>\n

\"\"John Forester<\/p>\n

WVU Medicine St. Joseph\u2019s Hospital President and CEO John Forester said he left the hospital to drive home north on I-79 when the storm hit last Tuesday. He said at times it felt as if he were \u201cdriving through a tornado.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forester made contact with hospital staff, who reported floodwaters entered the building and there was about 1\/4 inch of flood water in some areas. Power was never lost during the event, but cell service was lost and then quickly restored with the addition of two Starlink antennas. No patients had to be moved, and care was never compromised during the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re on top of a hill, so we have a catbird\u2019s-eye view of Buckhannon, and you would not expect to have any flooding on top of a hill like this,\u201d Forester said on WAJR\u2019s \u201cTalk of the Town.\u201d \u201cBut we did have some water come into the hospital in a couple of areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Joe Second<\/p>\n

In Buckhannon, there were reports of 4.5 inches of rain in about 37 minutes.<\/p>\n

The rainfall may have been slightly higher in Weston and the effects on the Vandalia Mon Health Stonewall Jackson Hospital were more serious. Senior Director of Operations Joe Second said he started home when the storm started and attempted to turn around and come back but floodwaters rose too high in a matter of minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard between five and seven inches of rain in the first 45 minutes to an hour,\u201d Second said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of Weston that exists in the 100 to 500-year flood plain, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve seen anything like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the first hours of the storm, water was rising around Vandalia Mon Health Stonewall Jackson Hospital, stopping anything or anyone from getting in or out. The hospital went on generator power with no problems, no patients were moved and care continued as normal, Second said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were kind of on an island for a little until we waited for the water to come down, so that was really our biggest concern,\u201d Second said. \u201cIs the hospital operational and are the patients well taken care of while we can\u2019t get folks into or out of the hospital?\u201d<\/p>\n

There was no emergency room surge at either location during the storm but both expect there to be an uptick in emergency room visits as the cleanup continues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did not particularly see a big surge from it we did have a few folks come in,\u201d Second said. \u201cWe\u2019re actually looking for more patients to come in as we get into the recovery stage when people are cleaning up and dealing with debris.\u201d<\/p>\n

The workers at each hospital, both healthcare and facilities support staff, came together to maintain normal operations through the crisis, Forester said.<\/p>\n

\u201cKudos to our staff here; they did a fabulous job responding to the disaster,\u201d Forester said. \u201cWe had many employees that stayed; one employee stayed for 36 hours, and we did make a shelter here for the staff.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WESTON, W.Va. \u2014 Both hospitals in the flood zone in North Central West Virginia enacted disaster plans and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-787093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}