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-Short Attention Span Theater-
After Sandy, NY hospital generators fail just like New Orleans
2012-11-01
Floodwaters still filled tunnels and power outages remained for much of lower Manhattan as recriminations began on why hundreds of patients had to be shuttled from one of the city's premier hospitals while a massive superstorm passed overhead Monday night.

NYU Langone Medical Center, which has a 786-bed campus on First Avenue, evacuated nearly 300 patients Monday night after the hospital's backup power generator failed. Ironically, big donor and the Medical Center's namesake, Kenneth Langone, was among the evacuees.

But Gary Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs and a trustee at NYU Langone, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV that hospital officials are aware of shortcomings in their infrastructure.

“I am acutely aware that the infrastructure at NYU is somewhat old,” he said. “We do have backup generation facilities. They are not state-of-the-art, they're not in the most state-of-the-art location. That's all very, very well-known by the board of directors of NYU.” Goldman Sachs, the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets and the largest by equity-trading revenue, maintained backup power at its lower Manhattan headquarters, which was surrounded by sandbags and sustained some flooding, according to Cohn.

In a news conference Tuesday night, the mayor said that too many generators were located in the basements of buildings in the areas evacuated for flood risk, though he did not name NYU Langone. It was not immediately clear why NYU Langone's generator failed.

In related news: New York's Bellevue Hospital Center is forced to evacuate and could stay shut two weeks after suffering storm damage.

Located several stories above the flooded levels, generators at Bellevue continued to operate in the storm, but fuel pumps for the generators, which are located in the hospital's flooded basement, suffered damage. It's unclear whether power lines to the fuel pumps caused the damage or if water leaked through the pump's protective seals and caused the failure.

Members of the National Guard carried fuel in 5-gallon buckets up 13 flights of stairs to keep the generators operating.

Conditions at Bellevue made an evacuation "urgent" but "not emergent," said Dr. Natalie Levy, a physician in internal medicine there.
Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418

#9  Followup snippets from the NYT:

-- The evacuation went quickly only because Bellevue had planned for such a possibility before Hurricane Irene hit last year, several doctors said.
--- Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn was straining to meet a rising need for emergency dialysis for hundreds of people shut out of storm-crippled private dialysis centers. Patients who would normally get three hours of dialysis were getting only two, to ensure the maximum number of people received at least a minimal amount of care.
--- Every hospital maintains an elaborate disaster plan, but after Hurricane Sandy, the fact that many health care facilities are in low-lying areas proved to be something of an AchillesÂ’ heel.
--- “as prepared as we think we are we’ve never had a mock disaster drill where we carried patients downstairs. I’m shocked that we didn’t do that. Now we’re going to.”
--- Despite the power problems, Bellevue was able to print out some medical records or get summaries from doctors to send with patients. But landlines and cellphones were affected, and doctors and nurses said they wished some other form of communication, like walkie-talkies, had been available.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2012-11-01 23:28  

#8  Didn't something like ground-level (or underground) generators happen in that Japanese Nuclear Reactor as well?
Posted by: CrazyFool   2012-11-01 13:59  

#7  Guess what happens w/r to access to electronic patient records when the hospital loses power! There are none...no flipping thru the charts while holding a flashlight. No records to send with an evacuated patient.
Posted by: tipover   2012-11-01 13:52  

#6  Welcome to civilisation Green style.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2012-11-01 12:53  

#5  Same thing happened at a hospital in Boston during the blackout back in the 1960s. Generator in the basement; pumps, but electrically powered.
Posted by: Pappy   2012-11-01 11:28  

#4  We've been recommending generator and electrical switchgear placements above-grade (including upper levels) for years to our customers in areas that basement flooding occurs (like most metro areas in our upper midwest market). Problem is that space is at such a premium for a lot of the facility types, this equipment is placed in the 'dark recesses' more often than not.

Newer (and expensive) technologies allow 'dual-fuel' (LP/NG & Diesel) operation for larger generators that does offer some protection. Bellevue almost got it right.
Posted by: Mullah Richard   2012-11-01 11:21  

#3  and a vented in-the-ground fuel tank for the generator FTW!
Posted by: Frank G   2012-11-01 10:06  

#2  They found that out in Mobile as well. Guess the word doesn't get around. Now if they sack the senior management of the hospitals, I bet it would get the attention and action it requires. Nah. Who gets fired for really serious stuff anymore? It's usually some form of zipper disease to move these types out.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2012-11-01 09:29  

#1  After the Allison and Rita flooding, the Texas Medical Center came to an interesting conclusion: don't store emergency equipment in the basement, particularly generators.
Whoda thunk?
Posted by: ed in texas   2012-11-01 07:10  

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