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Hospitals
operate on backup power
Aug. 15, 2003
CECILIA
LE
Observer-Dispatch
UTICA -- Patients at Utica hospitals were unaffected
Thursday as operations continued on backup power, officials
at Faxton-St. Luke's, St. Elizabeth Medical Center and
Heritage House said.
The
Faxton campus was not hit by the outage while the St.
Luke's campus lost main power but continued to run on
auxiliary power, spokeswoman Debra Altdoerffer said.
All
patient and surgery units at St. Luke's will be operating
and air-conditioned on backup power as long as needed,
but other services are down, she said.
"Instead
of five elevators there's one elevator in each unit,
everybody's computers are down, and the cafeteria's
out so they're making box dinners for patients,"
she said.
Lighting
and air conditioning was limited in non-patient areas.
Medical recording was being done manually.
If
the blackout continues, the hospital will assess the
next day's surgeries to see if any need to be moved
to the Faxton campus. St. Luke's was able to perform
possible emergency surgeries Wednesday night, Altdoerffer
said.
The
nursing care facility Heritage House also is running
on backup power. Some phones and elevators are out,
but meal service is operational, director of nursing
Diane Jastrzab said.
"Everything
is a go," she said. "The staff has been running
up and down the stairs.
As
for the 220 residents, "I don't think they're aware
of anything being different," Jastrzab said. "Inside
this building everything is pretty much the same."
Heritage
House employee Peter Maxson didn't know that when the
power went out at his house Thursday evening. He was
heating water in the microwave when it suddenly dimmed
and then went out, along with the refrigerator.
He
and his wife, who both work at the nursing home, returned
to see if the residents needed help.
Maxson
was living in New York City in 1965, when failures in
the power grid caused an infamous citywide blackout.
"People
were stealing from the stores," he reminisced.
"They took the clothes right off the mannequins."
When
the power shut off, Maxson worried residents wouldn't
be able to get around. They were supposed to have a
root beer float party, and he hoped it could still go
on. So he went back to work.
But
they didn't need his help.
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