Flood forces diversion of 12 surgeries at Victoria General

Island’s trauma centre ‘pretty practised at managing incident’ that flooded eight rooms and triggered infection controls

Victoria General Hospital is back in operation after a flood forced the Island’s trauma centre to divert 12 surgeries to Royal Jubilee Hospital.

“It was a pretty major flood,” said Mark Blandford, director of clinical operations at Victoria General Hospital.

“It was a full-on gushing, kind of fire-hydrant type flood. It took 15 to 20 minutes for them to stop the water.”

A valve in a handwashing sink burst at 2 a.m. July 10 outside one of two labour and delivery operating rooms dedicated to emergency and planned Caesarean sections.

“As of now the only loss is two adult surgical operating rooms,” Blandford said.

Work on them is scheduled to be completed in a month.

Blandford said two to four operating rooms are closed every summer so that doctors and staff can take vacation.

“Our capacity is not affected and we are back to full strength,” he said.

A C-section had concluded when the pipe burst July 10, flooding eight rooms — four delivery rooms and two labour and delivery operating rooms dedicated to C-sections and two general surgery operating rooms.

“It was a big deal, but we’re pretty practised at managing incidents because we are the trauma centre for the Island, so we had a fairly robust incident response process,” Blandford said.

There was no impact to the mother and baby, he said.

The damage was thought to have been contained but a specialist brought in found water had seeped up the walls and tracked downstairs to the floor below, affecting two operating rooms.

Walls were pulled down and floors pulled up. “The damage was much more extensive,” Blandford said.

The biggest concern was infection control. Negative-pressure containment screens were erected around the remediated areas to ensure that no asbestos or other contaminants escaped to the rest of the hospital.

“We held here a daily briefing,” Blandford said.

“We treat it like a major emergency … and the infection control people are monitoring all the way along … to make sure remediation is done properly and we don’t impact the rest of the hospital.”

One of the delivery rooms was up and running in two days, he said.

Royal Jubilee Hospital opened an operating room, closed for the summer, to accommodate the extra 12 surgeries.

That allowed VGH to maintain two of its other operating rooms for dedicated C-sections.

Blandford said that despite aggressive and robust routine maintenance, Victoria General Hospital is a 35-year-old building with 35-year-old plumbing and something undetected can be expected to give now and then.