It is a pre-dawn morning during the winter of 2008. It has been raining heavily for a week straight. All the dams are filled to capacity. The McKenzie and Willamette rivers are
flowing over their banks. At the new Sacred Heart Hospital along the McKenzie River,
rising floodwaters have cut off vehicle access.
As in 1996, residents throughout Lane County are waking to find they are stranded and in need of help. Many have been injured and some are missing. Unfortunately, most
regional rescue efforts must remain focused on hospital evacuation. Water over two feet surrounds the hospital and evacuation is
hazardous. News reports air that the new McKenzie Willamette Hospital at the EWEB site is also facing rising floodwaters.
Most of Sacred Heart’s adjacent buildings, housing and nearby commercial outlets suffer major damage; several buildings have been destroyed which were stocked with medical supplies and hazardous materials. Moreover, due to the displaced floodwaters from all these buildings, every nearby residence
suffers extensive flood damage. Homes are
inundated and victims are trapped on roofs. More deaths around Lane County occur because of the strain on rescue personnel which remain tied up with hospital evacuation.
Any part of this scenario is possible and plausible! Something went wrong in the
hospital planning process for the new hospital at RiverBend. They knew most of the
RiverBend site is really a flood plain.
Yet they plow forward with their so-called
experts to counter serious issues raised in the planning process. They can elevate the
roadways and hospital itself, and build a dike to protect it from rising floodwaters, but a
hospital threatened by a flood will still
command use of every available resource
and rescue personnel while taking away from other countywide needs. Just where do this
giant flood-protected hospital and dozens
of other buildings force all the displaced
floodwaters? To the upstream, downstream and
adjacent properties.
Their experts cast aside very crucial issues in assessing flood risk. Now they know that if and when the river does change course, which it will some day, they will be
held accountable. Rule No. 1: Communities don’t build any emergency services (or museums) and especially hospitals, in areas prone to flooding!
The Sacred Heart hospital is being planned next to a river meander. They were right in naming it RiverBend. The Mathews’ house was also located adjacent to a meander. These wide turns are where the river is most likely to change course when it cuts across the neck of a U-shaped turn, leaving only an “oxbow lake” where the channel used to be, and can substantially reshape the river just upstream and downstream.
Responding at the public meeting on the loss of the Mathews’ property on Feb. 4, 2004, Lane County Commissioner Bobby Green stated, “We need to learn from this.” But
this community, so far, hasn’t learned
anything. For this community to consider
putting not just one, but two hospitals, in
areas at risk of flood danger could be the
most irresponsible, arrogant and idiotic
decisions this community’s leaders have ever made. Knowing we could be without a
hospital when we need it most, during a catastrophic flood, is unfathomable. It is negligent to build emergency services in areas at any risk of flood. McKenzie-Willamette better take a second look as well.
Please understand, it is not so important that our hospital rooms have a nice
river view.

David Rodriguez lives in Springfield, just
upstream from where the Mathews’ house
once stood, and has been involved with river-related issues since the mid-1990s