As Milton Nears, Flood-Proof Fences Will Face a Major Test in Tampa

For the second time in two weeks, Tampa General Hospital is getting ready to keep water at bay. Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall Wednesday and will test the hospital’s flood barrier.

It takes dozens of facilities workers to set up the nine-foot barrier made by AquaFence USA Inc. The same system went viral in a post on X as Hurricane Helene bore down on Florida’s Gulf Coast. More importantly, it protected the largest hospital in the region from record-setting storm surge, a hospital spokesperson said. Milton promises to be an even greater test of the fence, which is designed to handle storm surges up to 15 feet.

A growing number of companies are selling rapidly deployable technologies as corporations, governments and critical infrastructure adapt to a flood-prone world. Other flood-barrier systems on the market deploy water-filled dams, modular barriers made of plastic and foam, and permanent flood gates.

“We used to actually have to convince people that you’re in a flood zone and this is a risk for you,” said Thomas Briedis, president of the New Jersey-based AquaFence subsidiary of a company headquartered in Norway. “But today, that no longer is needed.”

Tampa General is especially vulnerable to flooding, sitting right on the waterfront of one of the most hurricane-vulnerable cities in the US. But rising sea levels are increasing the risk of flooding everywhere along the coast, whether from storm surge or sunny day floods during high tide. And as Helene’s destruction in Asheville, North Carolina, makes clear, inland areas are also at risk of inundation from extreme rainfall as the planet warms.

AquaFence’s modular flood walls are made of two roughly one-inch-thick panels that fold and open up similar to a laptop. The horizontal panel is placed facing outward, which helps stabilize the entire system against floods. “Because of that, you have a relatively lightweight, rapidly deployable system you can set up very quickly,” Briedis said.

Reusability is a selling point — AquaFence’s barriers are certified to be reused as many as 60 times — and the system can store flat. AquaFence says companies including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and Citigroup Inc. as well as critical infrastructure like US military bases and LaGuardia Airport use its system.

AquaFence started in 1999 in Norway, where it focused on addressing flooding from spring snowmelt. The company expanded to the U.S. in 2007 and had its “big break” after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast in 2012, Briedis said. It now has flood protection systems — which range in price from $350 to $1,000 a linear foot — in use in over 24 US states, including areas prone to river flooding.

While older buildings like Tampa General Hospital — which is almost 100 years old — may require flood barriers that surround the entire building, newer buildings are increasingly planning for flooding. That means they only require limited barriers to block glass or doorways.

Climate change is increasing the risk and severity of floods and supercharging rainfall — and development patterns are making things worse by paving over vacant land that can absorb water, according to Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Really there’s no single place, at least in the US, where you’re going to be completely free of climate-related extreme events in the future,” she said.