Broken water pipe closes four hospital surgery suites

Two dozen elective surgeries were postponed at the Royal Alexandra Hospital on Thursday after a broken water pipe shut down four operating rooms.

The break occurred early in the morning in the Diagnostic Treatment Centre, which houses 11 surgery suites.

Alberta Health Services said four of the suites had to be closed for a day, but damage was minimal enough that they were able to reopen Friday morning.

The remaining seven operating rooms in the centre were unaffected by the break, as were 18 other surgery suites in different buildings at the Royal Alex.

AHS said the procedures that were postponed were all nonurgent elective procedures. All emergency and cancer surgeries proceeded as planned.

“Hospitals are complex facilities with lots of moving parts, and unfortunately things like this do happen from time to time,” the health authority said in an emailed statement. “Our priority is ensuring that any disruption caused by these types of events is minimized as quickly as possible, in order to provide good and timely care to our patients.”

The broken pipe is part of an aging water system scheduled for a $2.7-million replacement project this year.

News of the pipe failure comes amid increasing pressure to overhaul the Royal Alex and Misericordia hospitals, both of which have made headlines in recent years for outdated infrastructure and space constraints.

The main Active Treatment Centre at the Royal Alex opened 55 years ago, but the Diagnostic Treatment Centre where the leak occurred is a much newer building constructed in 1994.