This week, many people trying to get medication for drug addiction in the Seattle area had to wait hours when a methadone clinic was forced to close.
A pipe on the second floor burst on Sunday, during the recent cold snap. Water cascaded down onto the first floor and into the basement, where it left sixteen inches of standing water.
Evergreen Treatment Services runs the clinic out of a century-old building; like many nonprofits in the state, they don’t have the money to renovate or repair.
Sean Soth, the organization’s director of health integration, helped organize buses to take clients to a clinic in Renton. Many people waited long hours in the cold to get their medication.
"We can take the literal, kind of, collapse of this building, and talk about the risk that we run at nonprofits — especially in behavioral health, and in substance use treatment — on a regular basis, because they are underfunded, and the people we're treating are struggling," Soth said, standing outside the clinic, where people gathered under a pavilion-style tent next to a heater, waiting to take a shuttle.
Local drug experts have pushed methadone as a critical and under-utilized part of the fight against fentanyl. Soth said it's the drug that’s most impactful for reducing fentanyl cravings and withdrawal symptoms.
But this week, not everyone has been able to get it. The Seattle clinic expected 600 people on Tuesday, many of whom ended up waiting for hours in the cold.
"People did have to walk out," Soth said. "They had housing appointments… or jobs."
Since then, around a third of the Seattle clients have stopped showing up, but roughly 350 keep returning, wait time or not.
Evergreen Treatment Services launched a Flood Relief Fund asking for community support. The addiction and social services nonprofit does not yet know the exact cost of repairs but said it will be in the millions. As of Friday, they had raised more than $38,000.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
