Jersey City Medical Center was negatively impacted, both physically and operationally, by inundation during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. The project involves 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 consists 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.

All work will be done in an efficient manner to not affect hospital operations, as they will be fully operational during construction. Utilities, pump stations, new loading dock and interior flood mitigation measures (retractable flood gates) will be built to further protect hospital critical operations construction will include, 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, and provision of dewatering pumps and protect 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.

Key features of the project included:

  • Demolition – loading dock and canopy steel, building façade granite panels, pavements
  • Piles – Drilled Displacement Piles (DDP) and micro piles (132 each)
  • Contaminated soil removal (5,000 cubic yards)
  • Concrete floodwall shear keys, grade beams, structural slabs and walls (3,000 cubic yards)
  • Stormwater pipe (3,600 linear feet), structures (30 each), and trench drain (700 linear feet)
  • Primary deployable flood barrier outside hospital, steel decorative posts with fabric storage trench – 500 linear feet
  • Secondary deployable flood barrier inside hospital
  • Mechanical pump stations
  • Construction of floodwalls