Dozens rescued from roof of Tennessee hospital during flooding from Helene

By CNN Newsource

Published September 27, 2024 1:52 PM

By Elise Hammond, Nicole Chavez, Zoe Sottile and Sara Smart, CNN

(CNN) — More than 50 people have been rescued after being stranded on the roof of a Tennessee hospital Friday – some of them for hours – due to rising floodwaters from Hurricane Helene, according to a city official.

The dozens of people trapped atop Unicoi County Hospital in Erwin, Tennessee, were all taken to safety as of Friday evening, Michael Baker, Erwin’s alderman, told CNN.

“We’ve had a constant stream of helicopters picking them up and dropping them off into the city at safe places,” Baker said earlier Friday. “There’s a helicopter on top of the hospital, and we have another one, hovering nearby to start to carousel getting everybody off, but this is a team effort.”

Ballad Health, which manages Unicoi, was notified the hospital needed to be evacuated at around 9:30 a.m. local time Friday, the healthcare organization said in a post on X. But because of flooding and high winds from the deadly storm, ambulances and helicopters could not reach the building safely.

Erwin, about 100 miles east of Knoxville, is located in the southern Appalachian Mountains, close to Tennessee’s border with North Carolina.

A total of 54 people were moved to the roof, and seven others put in rescue boats, Ballad Health said in a statement earlier Friday. The hospital system said the count included 11 patients.

Unicoi County Hospital was “engulfed by extremely dangerous and rapidly moving water,” the statement on X said. Because of how quickly the water was rising around and inside the hospital, rescue boats were also not able to evacuate people safely.

Ballad Health called the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency and the National Guard’s efforts to get the people to safety “a dangerous rescue operation.”

“The water came up so fast, I literally looked at the owner and said, ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’” Baker said.

Unicoi County Hospital is a nonprofit, 10-bed hospital, according to its website.

At least 45 people have been killed across five states during the storm, which has produced flash flooding across the Southeast after making landfall in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane. Now a tropical depression, the storm has left millions of customers without power, destroyed homes and prompted road closures.

‘Scariest thing I’ve ever been through,’ rescued woman says

Angel Mitchell was among dozens trapped on the roof for four hours Friday while her 83-year-old mother, whom she was visiting, sat nearby in a rescue boat, she told CNN. Mitchell says they were quickly evacuated from a hospital room as water began entering the building.

Mitchell said the power went out and hospital staff began directing patients and visitors to the roof for safety, grabbing any essential supplies that they could.

Her mother, who was sick with pneumonia, was placed into a lifeboat. Meanwhile, Mitchell says she was directed outside where she waded in chest-deep waters around the side of the building to climb up a ladder to the roof, at times having to grab the building to avoid getting swept away.

“It was the scariest thing I’ve ever been through,” Mitchell told CNN tearfully.

While Mitchell was on the roof, she saw her mother – along with her oxygen tank – in one of the rescue boats. “That’s what tore me up the most – looking down and seeing her,” Mitchell said. She was able to communicate with her mother only by yelling loudly down to her.

As they awaited rescue, floodwaters rushed by and Mitchell saw what she believed to be parts of dislodged houses and barns floating by them, she said. Video from the scene shows floodwater surrounding and nearly covering vehicles, including at least one ambulance.

“We all tried to stay calm, but it was extremely hard,” Mitchell said.

A group of the patients, nurses and doctors huddled together and prayed as they waited to be saved. Mitchell says by the time rescue teams arrived, the water was approximately 10 feet below the roofline.

The helicopters transported those stranded to a hospital 20 miles north of the Unicoi County Hospital.

As of Friday afternoon, approximately 1.1 million people are under at least 14 different flash flood emergencies, the highest level of flash flood warning issued by the National Weather Service, which is reserved for catastrophic flooding that presents a severe threat to human life.