Walter Reed National Military Medical Center has experienced widespread flooding in recent days and outages of its steam system vital for equipment sterilization, significant infrastructure failures that threaten to disrupt patient care for months to come, The Washington Post has learned.

The medical facility in Maryland, responsible for the care of U.S. presidents and severely wounded service members among others, experienced the utility problems beginning in mid-January. Since then, there have been multiple breakdowns that have left the hospital unable to handle a large influx of patients should a crisis occur, according to internal emails and imagery obtained by The Post, and two Walter Reed staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation.

The source of the flooding, a burst sprinkler pipe, spewed 60,000 gallons of water before it was contained - enough “to fill a 25x50 foot swimming pool,” according to an email sent to Walter Reed staff on Monday from the medical center’s director, Navy Capt. Melissa C. Austin. Five buildings and dozens of rooms and hallways were affected, the email says. Video and other imagery obtained by The Post show water gushing from pipes, soaked ceiling tiles that crumbled and fell to the floor, and a constant drip of liquid falling like rain from the rafters.

Another infrastructure failure, the breakdown and leak of the hospital’s steam system, happened around Jan. 18 and has compromised staff’s ability to sterilize surgical equipment while sharply reducing the number of surgeries performed there, said one of Walter Reed’s employees.

The sterile processing department has become “nonfunctional,” according to a recent briefing slide shared with Walter Reed staff and obtained by The Post. The document says a concurrent release of steam has created “unbearable conditions” in the general surgery department, with temperatures reaching to 112 degrees.

Staffers said some patient rooms have experienced similar temperatures. They described conditions inside the sterile processing department as hellish, saying the service members who work there are struggling amid sweltering working conditions.

The Defense Health Agency, which oversees Walter Reed, did not immediately respond to several questions from The Post, instead releasing a public statement on Friday faulting burst pipes caused by recent freezing temperatures, and acknowledging that 50 rooms and six elevators were affected by water damage.

“Patients were safely moved to other locations within the medical center or transferred to other hospitals when necessary,” the agency’s statement says. “Clean-up is complete and repairs are underway. Walter Reed continues to deliver care and admit patients to all wards.”

It is unclear if the steam releases and other problems are interrelated. The statement does not address the steam-outage issues or reductions in surgical care reported by Walter Reed staff.

The disruption is expected to destabilize operations across Walter Reed for weeks if not longer as appointments are pushed back and non-emergency procedures get canceled or delayed, staffers said.

On Friday, the extreme temperatures affecting some facilities relented, though it was unclear if the issue was permanently resolved, one staffer said. Some repairs will require contract work that may take months to complete, staffers have been told by the hospital’s leadership.

With capacity so severely reduced, the staffers said, a chief worry is the hospital’s ability to absorb patients in the event of a mass-casualty event. They highlighted the 2021 suicide bombing in Afghanistan that killed 13 U.S. troops and wounded about 45 others, saying Walter Reed, which treated many of those hurt in the Kabul airport attack, would struggle to handle even a fraction of those trauma cases today.

“The primary mission of this place is to be ready to take care of people who get seriously injured supporting combat operations,” one staffer said. “And we cannot do that right now.”

The U.S. military is not actively involved in a war, but thousands of troops deployed throughout the Middle East face persistent danger as hostility between Israel and Iran has gripped much of the region for months on end. American forces in Iraq and Syria have come under attack numerous times in the past year.

Walter Reed continued to perform the most critical patient procedures, including vascular and cancer surgery, the staffers said, but overall volume has been sharply reduced with many patients sent to other hospitals. The facility typically completes about 40 surgeries each day, but as of Thursday the staffers estimated that number was in the single digits.

Operating rooms have fewer clean surgical tools available and must send them to regional hospitals to be sterilized, which can take up to two days to receive back, a staffer said. The lack of steam also means workers cannot “flash sterilize” equipment in emergencies, further risking patient health, the staffer said.

Austin, the hospital’s director, has appeared to downplay concerns from workers about a potential for mold growth after so much water penetrated the facility and the threat that could pose to patients and staff, her emails show. It’s true there may be a “funky” smell, she wrote in one message to staff, but that doesn’t mean mold is present. Mold, she wrote, is part of the “tapestry of life” in Maryland and any overgrowth would be targeted by industrial hygiene workers brought in to clean affected spaces, she wrote.

In an update Austin sent to staff Wednesday, she highlighted the reopening of two fast food establishments on the hospital grounds, Dunkin’ and Subway, and counted among those “wins” the resumption of care for infants born prematurely. Austin conceded her staff was frustrated with the uncertainty looming. ““We still don’t have a solid estimate for when repairs will be completed,” she wrote.

Walter Reed, the U.S. military’s flagship hospital, began as a Navy-run facility when President Franklin D. Roosevelt laid its cornerstone in Bethesda, Maryland, in late 1940. In 2011, the Army shuttered a similar hospital in Washington and combined it with the Navy’s to form Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on the site of the original hospital in Maryland. Some buildings there have newer construction while others that house patient care are more than 50 years old.

The Walter Reed system has experienced controversies in the past. In 2007, when the Army oversaw the hospital in Washington, The Post uncovered systemic neglect and poor living conditions affecting wounded troops during the height of the Iraq War. The Pentagon relieved the hospital’s commander in response. In 2022, troops living on the grounds at the current facility endured months with no air conditioning or hot water, Military Times reported.

Recurring problems with power and water are magnified because military commands outside of Walter Reed have responsibility for those utilities, leading to delays in addressing such problems when they occur, said Mel Helgeson, former director of surgery who was assigned to Walter Reed for 20 years.

Compounding the issue, he said, is the fact most hospital directors do not stay in that role for very long and thus don’t invest in long-term solutions to the layers of decay.

Helgeson, who retired in 2024, said readiness at Walter Reed has been in decline for years, and that he agrees with staffers’ concerns about the hospital’s ability to handle a mass-casualty event.

At Walter Reed, he said, “lots of people struggle with that.”