Hospital evacuees OK after outage

Loss of power forces transfer of some patients

A power outage Friday at Kindred Hospital in downtown Fort Lauderdale led to the evacuation of critically ill patients on ventilators, although emergency power came on later and allowed the hospital to continue to function.

Power went out at 12:24 p.m., according to Florida Power & Light. Several ambulances arrived to transfer patients from the privately owned, 70-bed hospital at 1516 E. Las Olas Blvd. to Broward Health Medical Center.

“Patient care and safety are our No. 1 concern,” David Wagner, South Florida market CEO for Kindred Healthcare, said in a statement. “Earlier in the day, we lost power, and out of an abundance of caution and in order to protect our patients, we evacuated seven intensive-care patients.”

At the time of the evacuation, the hospital was without backup power, although emergency power came on later, according to the statement.

Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue, which had eight rescue trucks on the scene in minutes, put the number of evacuees at eight.

The remaining patients on ventilators had sixhour backup batteries on which to run the machines.

“Patient care went flawlessly and we took all eight patients to the hospital without any issues,” said Battalion Chief Greg May of Fort Lauderdale FireRescue. “Nobody died, everybody’s fine.”

A power outage during Hurricane Irma last year resulted in 12 deaths at a Hollywood nursing home, leading to increased regulation of power supplies at nursing homes and heightened awareness of the dangers of losing power.

Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue Deputy Chief Tim Heiser said the hospital’s decision to conduct a partial evacuation may have reflected increased sensitivity to the need to move fast in such situations.

“They definitely learned from the mistakes that were made during Irma,” Heiser said.

May said that outage had no effect on how the rescue effort was carried out.

“I was the incident commander, and it didn’t even cross my mind,” he said.

The private hospital, which specializes in longterm care, is owned by Kindred Healthcare, based in Louisville, Ky. The company owns 94 hospitals and other health care facilities at 2,471 locations in 45 states, according to its website. Kindred is being acquired by a consortium of Humana, also of Louisville, and two other firms.

Dave Nardi, owner of Pizza City across from the hospital, said police closed down Las Olas Boulevard in both directions in front of the hospital.

“They were taking the people right out the front door here on the stretchers,” Nardi said. “I did see one lady. They were actually pumping a breathing bag.”

Clara Sanchez, who works at Bauformat South-East kitchen store across from the hospital, said some of the patients were wearing oxygen masks.

“A couple of them looked very wilted, very tired,” Sanchez said.

A Kindred Hospital official said a blown transfer switch caused the power outage, and the hospital was waiting for a repair crew to fix it.

FPL spokesman Richard Beltran said the outage was due to “customerowned equipment.”

“It had nothing to do with our ability to deliver power to the customer,” he said.