Power outage disrupts service at Victoria Hospital

“So, whether they would come into the hospital at all, or if they would come in, potentially stabilize and transfer out just because certain … equipment and necessities are on a power system that is not as stable.”

For example, if someone were to require trauma surgery, the PAPHR may have that patient transferred to Saskatoon.

Dahl said Saskatoon would be a primary destination for redirected patients. Calls that come in from Shellbrook may be routed directly to Saskatoon, other patients who are further west may go to North Battleford and those who are further east may go to Melfort, depending on the situation, Dahl said.

The emergency department is open, but there are some challenges in terms of the diagnostic equipment. Dahl said this equipment has to be managed so their use doesn’t lead to any further disruptions or major outages.

“If you have a procedure and you’re not sure, we would advise people to perhaps call just in to the hospital to see if everything is continuing as normal.”

Hospital staff contacted dialysis and elective surgery patients on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, the hospital would be restarting some of the dialysis machines and ensuring that the system is stable before adding other machines.

“So, we might not have all of the machines that we would normally have running at the same time, we might have to have fewer of them,” Dahl said. “So it may take longer to get all of the dialysis patients through their treatments today than would normally happen.”

There is usually a group that receives dialysis in the morning and another that receives it in the afternoon, but their treatments may be staggered throughout the day. This will be based on the number of dialysis machines the hospital can have running at a time.

The hospital is able to deliver in-patient services, as well as obstetrics and maternity ward and deliveries as normal. Dahl said if there is a concern about a situation with an individual patient, there may be a decision to transfer the patient to another hospital.

The PAPHR is investigating the cause of the transformer failure.

The outage also disrupted the PAPHR’s telephone and computer networks, but those were restored late Tuesday night.

Dahl said maintenance staff worked to restore essential power, but now the hospital has to manage the load, or amount of energy, the hospital uses. The maintenance staff has had to manage how much is on the essential system.

The emergency generator did not come on because the outage didn’t originate outside of the hospital.

“We have an emergency generator and it was working fine, but it never came on because the power itself coming into the building wasn’t disrupted. It happened after the emergency generator.”

As of Wednesday morning, some of the power has been restored. The hospital’s primary challenge is to ensure that everything is running properly and that they don’t put too much pressure on the system that has been developed with the backups they’re using, Dahl said.

There isn’t a timeline for when power will be fully restored.

Dahl isn’t aware of a situation like this in the past that has affected the hospital.

A few years ago in 2012, the city was hit by a major power outage, but the hospital’s emergency system kicked in and ran things, Dahl said.

“It’s that system that’s been affected,” he said of this outage. “So, all of the things that would have been running if the power was out everywhere else, that’s the network that was down, so we’ve had to rebuild the supply back to that network within the hospital.”

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames

by Thia James

Power outage disrupts service at Victoria Hospital

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