Power restored to Ottawa Hospital General Campus, but ER remains closed

The Ottawa Hospital says power has been fully restored to the General Campus after a transformer fire on Friday, but the emergency department is still closed.

The fire plunged several floors into darkness Friday and forced nearly 100 patients, including 17 babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), be moved out of affected areas. Surgeries, clinics and appointments at the hospital this week are being rescheduled.

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"Unfortunately, we run 16 (operating rooms), so we do a lot of surgery on this site," said Ottawa Hospital CEO Cameron Love. "Having lost three or four or five days of elective activity, what we'd be doing now is calling out to all the patients, reschedule them over the coming one, two three weeks. Anything that's time sensitive or urgent in nature gets prioritized."

The hospital also confirmed Monday that an unspecified amount of donated blood was lost because the refrigerators storing it lost power.

"We take very precautionary measures where any of the blood products or medications that we feel may have been compromised unfortunately have to be removed from a safety perspective," Love said.

No one was hurt as a result of the fire, but several floors were damaged by smoke and by the water used to fight the fire.

The babies that were taken to CHEO over the weekend have since returned to the General Campus.

 

 

 

 

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In a statement late Monday afternoon, the hospital said it had lifted its "code grey – power" after normal power was fully restored to the entire General Campus. Large generators were on scene earlier in the day to power the hospital.

"We continue to work towards restoring normal operations at the General Campus, however a Code Orange – General Only – remains in effect," said spokesperson Rebecca Abelson.

Anyone seeking an emergency department visit is asked to go to other hospitals in the city.

Love told CTV News Ottawa that five units still weren't up and running on Monday. The goal is to have the code orange lifted by early Thursday at the latest.

"The NICU has be restored, so we're transferring babies back today and the other two or three will happen between now and probably end of day Wednesday, so our goal is end of day Wednesday beginning of Thursday to be back to pretty much normal operation," he said. 

--With files from CTV News Ottawa's Katie Griffin.