Hospital probes power failure in wildfire

subscribe

Authorities are investigating why an emergency generator failed at a local hospital after a wildfire had burned through powerlines to the facility.

Patients were plunged into darkness for several hours when the fire tore through two dozen office bungalows and trailers on the outskirts of the Olive View-UCLA Medical Center campus early November 15 and chewed through power lines that supplied electricity to the 337-bed hospital in the foothill community of Sylmar.

The hospital, which housed 200 patients at the time, lost power. The lights briefly went back on after the backup generator kicked in, but the facility fell into darkness again when the emergency generator failed.

"All of our systems failed," hospital spokeswoman Carla Nino said. "Staff stepped up and did a miraculous job. There was no compromise to our patients."

During the 3 1/2-hour outage, nurses tried to calm scared patients, security guards patrolled the pitch-black halls with flashlights and emergency room staffers used hand-cranked ventilators to keep critical patients breathing.

About two dozen patients on ventilators, including 10 newborns, were transferred by ambulance to neighboring hospitals. The hospital did not suffer damage and did not evacuate.

Olive View and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works are leading the investigation into the generator failure. The hospital also plans to hire a consultant to conduct an independent probe.

At the fire command center over the weekend, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger raised concerns about Olive View outage.

"We need to make sure we have good backup generators at our local hospitals," he said.

Related News

Kakrapar nuclear plant

India’s Kakrapur 3 achieves criticality

DELHI - Unit 3 of India’s Kakrapar nuclear plant in Gujarat achieved criticality on 22 July. It is India’s first indigenously designed 700MWe pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR) to achieve this milestone.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated nuclear scientists, saying the reactor is a shining example of the 'Make in India' campaign and a trailblazer for many such future achievements. 

India developed its own nuclear power generation technology as it faced sanctions from the international community following its first nuclear weapons test in in 1974. It has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. India has developed a three-stage nuclear programme based on…

READ MORE
pickering nuclear plant

Ontario faces growing electricity supply gap, study finds

READ MORE

Inside Copenhagen’s race to be the first carbon-neutral city

READ MORE

787 dreamliner

How the 787 uses electricity to maximise efficiency

READ MORE

elizabeth may

Elizabeth May wants a fully renewable electricity grid by 2030. Is that possible?

READ MORE