Several critical patients in a building at Los Angeles’ White Memorial Hospital complex were evacuated Tuesday after an emergency generator, running because of Tropical Storm Hilary, lost power.
The patients were in the hospital’s Specialty Care Center. While the complex hosted 241 patients, only 28 of the patients, particularly those on ventilators, had to be transported to another hospital.
The other 213 patients were moved to White Memorial Hospital’s South Tower, which did not suffer a power outage. All affected patients were safe as of 7 a.m. local time, said hospital officials.
The power first went out at the hospital around 3 a.m. PDT (6 a.m. EDT) Monday during the brunt of the storm.
“We have three generators that immediately kicked in, and those generators are supposed to last for about three days. However, this morning … we experienced an outage of our emergency generators as well. So we had no power going to the main hospital building,” White Memorial Hospital President John G. Raffoul said at a press conference.
In an update posted at 1:48 a.m. local time, the Los Angeles Fire Department indicated that some of the evacuees were pediatric and OB/GYN patients. Among the evacuees were seven babies from the neonatal intensive care unit, as well as a mother who gave birth at around 11:45 p.m. Monday, according to KNBC-TV.
“Our challenges were: There’s no power, there’s no elevators. … Also, firefighters needed to assist with transporting the patients downstairs while we staged our ambulances. … At the height of the incident, we had 46 LAFD resources that were assigned to the incident, which is a total of 104 LAFD personnel,” LAFD Fire Chief Kristin M. Crowley said at the press conference.
The equipment failure in the generator stemmed from an electrical panel issue, a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power spokesperson told KTLA-TV.
Mr. Raffoul said an emergency generator has been ordered to turn the power back on, and the incident is under investigation.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.