In this Oct. 29, 2012, file photo, medical workers assist a patient into an ambulance during an evacuation of NYU Langone Medical Center Monday evening during Superstorm Sandy. Two of the city’s busiest, most important medical centers failed the simplest test of disaster-readiness during superstorm Sandy this week. They lost power. Their backup generators failed, or proved inadequate. Nearly 1,000 patients had to be evacuated. (AP Photo/ John Minchillo, File)
Floods render NYC hospitals powerless
In this Oct. 29, 2012, file photo, medical workers assist a patient into an ambulance during an evacuation of NYU Langone Medical Center Monday evening during Superstorm Sandy. Two of the city’s busiest, most important medical centers failed the simplest test of disaster-readiness during superstorm Sandy this week. They lost power. Their backup generators failed, or proved inadequate. Nearly 1,000 patients had to be evacuated. (AP Photo/ John Minchillo, File)
By DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press /
November 2, 2012
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The power at NYU went out in a flash, leaving the staff scrambling to evacuate 300 patients with no notice.
Dr. Robert Berg, an obstetrician, said that when he lost power in his apartment, he went to the hospital to charge his cellphone and was stunned to find it in chaos.
‘‘It didn’t really occur to me that the hospital was going to be in trouble,’’ he said. Even after finding the lobby dark, ‘‘I thought, ‘We'll have power upstairs. We’re an operating room.'’’
He wound up carrying two patients down flights of stairs on a ‘‘med sled.’’
‘‘There was a Category 1 outside and a Category 4 inside,’’ he said. ‘‘I can’t say that they were very well prepared for it.’’
That has left only one hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center, functioning in the southern third of Manhattan. It is also on backup power, but brought in two huge new generators Thursday, just in case.
Aviles said Bellevue might be out of commission for at least two more weeks. NYU Langone’s generators are operating again, but the hospital is waiting for Consolidated Edison to restore its power before it starts taking patients again. That could happen in a matter of days.
Flooding may pose less of a danger to the hospital’s power supply in the future. Construction is under way on a new power plant, at a cost of more than $200 million, that will run on natural gas and supply all the hospital’s power needs.
‘‘It’s a tremendous facility, with a lot of hardening built into it,’’ Cohen said.
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AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this report.
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