Partial blackout in L.A. hospital prompts evacuation of some patients
A blackout in one building on the White Memorial Hospital campus in Los Angeles has led to the evacuation of some patients, the L.A. Fire Department says. LAFD paramedics had to carry some downstairs to waiting ambulances because elevators weren't operating.
The LAFD said it was working with White Memorial staff to identify the patients who need to be brought to other hospitals after the Specialty Care Center went dark. In total, 241 patients are affected.
In a news conference held early Tuesday morning, Los Angeles City Fire Department public information officer Captain Cody Weiretar told reporters that the situation at the hospital was reported to the department just after 11 p.m. local time on Monday evening.
Patients on ventilators were topping the evacuation list, the department said. At first, 11 were chosen for evacuation.
In all, 30 patients were "deemed critical" and were being brought by LAFD ambulances to another hospital, the department said.
The rest of the patients in the facility, 211 of them, were classified as non-critical and were being moved to a different building on the campus, the South Tower, the department said.
The LAFD said 20 ambulances with firefighter paramedics and 22 fire companies were at the scene, but the lack of power has complicated rescue efforts.
"One of the issues that we ran into because the fact that there's a complete power outage here is zero lights. So zero visibility. We had no elevators working, so firefighter paramedics had to assist patients that were in critical condition to non-life-threatening critical or non-life-threatening condition down stairwells and they get them to a receiving ambulances," Weiretar said.
He said that firefighter paramedics also augmented medical machines and devices that stopped working because of the outage.
It wasn't clear what caused the outage or whether it was related to Hilary, the storm that dumped heavy rain on the region Monday.