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How extreme weather can have long-lasting consequences for community health

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

It has been an active natural disaster season across the U.S. Floods, wildfires and tornadoes can strike in a matter of minutes, even seconds, and Iowa Public Radio's Natalie Krebs reports they can have long-lasting consequences for community health.

NATALIE KREBS, BYLINE: It only took one minute for an EF4 tornado to rip through the small town of Greenfield, Iowa, in May. Flying debris and fierce, violent winds with a speed of more than 180 miles per hour severely damaged more than a hundred houses. It also blew out the windows of the Adair County Memorial Hospital and sent a car flying into the side of the building. Catherine Hillestad is the CEO of the hospital.

CATHERINE HILLESTAD: You know, there were glass shards in our walls, so we had to essentially tear everything down, re-drywall it and then repaint it.

KREBS: Hillestad is standing in the medical-surgical unit. She says every single department sustained damage. Three months after the storm, the hospital has just started to reopen. Over the summer, some services were relocated to the elementary school across town, and patients had to travel as much as an hour away for some care, Hillestad says.

HILLESTAD: One of our goals is to keep patients local. And so without the emergency room, without the operating room, we haven't been able to do that as much from the tornado.

KREBS: She says even though these issues should be resolved in the coming months, she expects that terrifying afternoon to impact the community for a long time to come.

HILLESTAD: I mean, obviously it'll be definitely something with mental health. That'll be a long-lasting effect - I mean, the PTSD, the trauma that was inflicted upon multiple people.

KREBS: Issues like post-traumatic stress disorder don't show up until months after events like the Greenfield tornado, says Tammy Jacobs. She's the hotline manager for Iowa Concern, which provides resources after disasters.

TAMMY JACOBS: Whenever it starts to - you know, the sky gets gray and black again, then those who've experienced tornadoes - they just start to remember that experience that they had with the tornadoes.

KREBS: Mental health effects aren't the only potential lingering health hazards facing Greenfield. Water damage is another foe, says hospital CEO Hillestad.

HILLESTAD: Our roof was essentially torn off. That allowed water to leak through.

(SOUNDBITE OF HAMMER BANGING)

KREBS: This was the case for many homes in Greenfield. If these structures aren't properly dried out, experts say it can also create issues. Construction crews and noises echo through the small town of 2,000 on a quiet Monday morning. Signs advertising roofing services are posted everywhere. Alicia Vasto is the water program director at the Iowa Environmental Council.

ALICIA VASTO: Standing water in a home for a long period of time can create a bunch of indoor health hazards, like mold. It could also create, like, a breeding ground for mosquitoes, which are, of course, vectors of disease.

KREBS: Experts like Maureen Lichtveld say, as extreme weather events like flooding become more common due to factors like rising temperatures from climate change, more lasting health challenges like these will pop up. Lichtveld is an environmental health expert at the University of Pittsburgh. She says, to start, policymakers need to be inclusive when developing plans to deal with extreme weather.

MAUREEN LICHTVELD: They might not call it climate change. But if flooding or tornadoes are their concerns, we need to meet them where they are, and we need to come up collaboratively with solutions.

KREBS: She says, until this happens, more communities like Greenfield will experience extreme weather events and the lasting health impacts that come with them.

For NPR News, I'm Natalie Krebs.

KELLY: And this story comes from Side Effects Public Media, a health reporting collaboration. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Natalie Krebs