Patients Are Evacuated After Blackout at Los Angeles Hospital
More than two dozen critically ill patients were evacuated from a Los Angeles hospital on Monday night after a power outage disrupted care, the authorities said. It was unclear whether the disruption was connected to the effects of Tropical Storm Hilary, which pummeled Southern California over the weekend.
The power outage was reported at Adventist Health White Memorial, in East Los Angeles, at 11:45 p.m. local time, Margaret Stewart, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Fire Department, said early Tuesday.
The Fire Department worked with the hospital’s staff to identify which critically ill patients would require transportation, beginning with those on ventilators, Ms. Stewart said.
The hospital was caring for 241 patients at the time, 28 of whom were in critical care and were taken to other hospitals in the area, Chief Kristin Crowley of the Los Angeles Fire Department said at a news conference on Tuesday morning.
By around 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, firefighters were bringing down patients because there were no elevators available with the power out.
Grace Hauser, a public information officer for the hospital, said that the power initially went out on Monday morning and that generators immediately switched on, restoring the electricity.
But the power failed again on Monday night, briefly plunging the hospital into chaos.
The hospital ordered an emergency generator that should arrive shortly, John Raffoul, the hospital’s president, said at the news conference on Tuesday. He added that the hospital was looking into why the generators failed in the first place and whether the failure was connected to Tropical Storm Hilary.
“We are in the mode of investigating that,” Mr. Raffoul said. “We don’t know the cause of the double failure we had here other than the fact that we had a major storm that hit us here in Southern California.”
The six-story hospital provides OB-GYN and neonatal intensive care and was caring for new and expectant mothers at the time. At least one woman gave birth during the outage, NBC Los Angeles reported.
Despite the chaos, all of the patients at the hospital are receiving the care they need, Ms. Hauser said.
“Everyone is fine, all the patients are fine,” Ms. Hauser said early Tuesday morning.
