Hurricane-proofing a Nantucket hospital
August 19th, 2018By Cynthia McCormick
The Cape Cod Times
- The 106,000-square-foot, 14-bed hospital is being built to hurricane design specifications established by Miami-Dade County
- Will allow the hospital to withstand Hurricane Irma-strength winds of 185 mph, rather than 150 mph as specified by Massachusetts building codes
- Massive 5-foot-by-5-foot concrete footings fortified by mesh
- Andersen Stormwatch windows
- A double-hulled exterior building shell will help the new hospital stand up to Category 5 winds
- Analog and digital phone lines
- Access to satellite phones
- The new Nantucket Cottage Hospital won’t even have a basement.
- The boiler room, currently located in the basement of the existing hospital, will be shackled to the flat roof of the new hospital, including two massive generators
- Electrical transformer switches will be located on the second floor instead of the first
- The fuel-pumping room is being built at grade level, but will have waterproof curbing like an inverted bathtub
- The six-over-six Andersen windows have multiple fastenings and have withstood objects hurled by hurricane-force winds in ballistic tests
- The shell of the building is constructed almost like two walls, with a water and vapor barrier between the inner and outer skin
- will have a larger capacity to go days without supplies
- will have enough food for seven to 10 days and generator fuel for many days
- will have 27,000 gallons of fuel on-site for the dual-purpose generators, more than three times the current capacity of 8,000 gallons of oil and propane
- The final cost is estimated to run about $120 million