‘Diarrhea-like’ sewage floods birthing centre at new hospital

MONTREAL — Two days after SNC-Lavalin declared the drainage problems at the new Montreal Children’s Hospital were “largely under control,” drains backed up in the birthing centre Friday morning, flooding the clinical area with “diarrhea-like” sewage water.

The extent of the drain blockage appears to be far worse than has been acknowledged either by SNC-Lavalin or the McGill University Health Centre as the flooding is widespread, occurring on an almost daily basis, the Montreal Gazette has learned.

In fact, MUHC housekeeping staff is often dispatched to mop up the flooding and disinfect patient floors — a process that can take up to two hours, said a source, suggesting the plumbing problems raise health and safety concerns at the facilities that opened only four months ago.

Two other sources confirmed the malfunctioning drains, with one source reporting a drain also backed up Thursday night at the Montreal Children’s.

The MUHC has a number of photographs documenting the flooding. A source provided the Gazette with one of the pictures showing housekeeping staff throwing quilted hospital bed pads on the floor to absorb the sewer water.

“The flooding happens five to 10 times a week in the birthing centre,” the source said. “I’m sorry to describe it this way, but sometimes it looks like diarrhea coming out of the drains.”

On Friday, an SNC- Lavalin spokesman, Louis-Antoine Paquin, attributed drain blockages ‘to the misuse of toilets.”

“The solution,” Paquin said, “is to open the pipes from underneath, where an operating room is located.”