Patients Evacuated From (New York) City Medical Center After Power Failure
Source: NY Times
A backup power system failed at one of the New York City’s premier medical centers on Monday night, forcing the evacuation of all patients to nearby hospitals amid the storm’s strong gusts, officials said.
The medical center, NYU Langone Medical Center, a sprawling complex in the low 30s near the East River, began transporting all 215 patients at the hospital to other facilities on Monday evening, They were still being transported to other nearby hospitals, including Sloan Kettering and Mt. Sinai, early Tuesday morning, a spokeswoman for the hospital said.
“They evacuated everybody,” said the spokeswoman, Lorinda Klein, who said the main communications systems at NYU Langone — phones and e-mail — were down. She could not say what had caused the failure of the hospital’s emergency systems, which power critical care units there.
NYU Langone said in a statement that the evacuations were “due to the severity of Hurricane Sandy and the higher than expected storm surge.” It added: “We are having intermittent telephone access issues and for this reason the receiving hospital will notify families of their relatives arrival.”
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/nyregion/patients-evacuated-from-nyu-langone-after-power-failure.html
