A partial power outage overnight at Los Angeles’ White Memorial Hospital led to the evacuation of at least 30 “critical” patients and left nearly 250 patients in the dark, fire officials said.
The outage was reported just after 11 p.m. Monday night at the hospital’s Specialty Care Center at its Boyle Heights campus. The tower houses a neonatal intensive care unit, obstetrics, gynecology, and rehabilitation departments, Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Cody Weireter said to reporters overnight.
A total of 241 patients were impacted by the outage, 30 of those were deemed “critical patients” and transported by ambulance to nearby hospitals, fire officials said in a release.
“Firefights are bringing them down to the ground floor, assisting ventilations as required, for transport,” officials said.
Meanwhile, the remaining 211 noncritical patients were going to be moved to another building that had power.
Weireter said one of the issues in responding to the partial hospital black out was no light meaning “zero visibility” and no working elevators. Firefighter paramedics had to assist patients down stairwells into receiving ambulances.
It’s not clear what sparked the outage, but at least 2,500 customers were without power overnight in Los Angeles County, according to PowerOutage.us, on the heels of Tropical Storm Hilary which pounded Southern California with record rain.
As of 5:30 a.m. local time (8:30 a.m. EST) about 1,500 were without power.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
