The Jersey City Medical Center is situated near the Morris Canal Basin, a small tributary to the Hudson River. The Medical Center was negatively impacted, both physically and operationally, by inundation during Superstorm Sandy in 2012 when it flooded the entire site area. The project involved the construction of flood mitigation measures at Jersey City Medical Center’s Wilzig Hospital in accordance with the flood mitigation strategy as part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Hazard Mitigation. This hospital is a 24/7 trauma center in an extremely populated urban environment construction consisting of 1,500 linear feet of a floodwall (500 linear feet of deployable, 1,000 linear feet of concrete) around the existing hospital, including two main entrances.
The Medical Center embarked on a program of flood resiliency to protect the facility against future flooding. The flood mitigation strategy proposed to protect the campus exterior walls, windows, and openings; replace the central expansion joint; and provide backflow prevention and additional protection for critical infrastructure and programmatic spaces. Several approaches were proposed for flood protection, including fixed and deployable walls, window protection, drainage system redesign, and utility redesign.
KSE Engineers, P.C. (KSE) provided geotechnical and civil engineering, as well as survey, services to support the design effort, and subsequently provided construction support.
All work was done in an efficient manner to not affect hospital operations, as the facility needed to be fully operational during construction. Utilities, pump stations, a new loading dock, and interior flood mitigation measures (retractable flood gates) were built to further protect critical hospital operations. The construction included, among other things, protection of the hospital’s exterior walls, windows, and openings; replacement of the central expansion joint; backflow prevention; additional protection for critical infrastructure and programmatic spaces; provision of dewatering pumps; and protection of the campus exterior to a design flood elevation of 18 feet, along with additional mitigation measures to protect critical interior infrastructure, rooms, and programmatic support services and clinical departments.
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