Anaheim Hospital’s Power Off in Outage

A blackout hit Anaheim General Hospital for 40 minutes Sunday when high-voltage wires in the area exploded and the hospital’s own backup system failed.

Nurses kept two patients’ respirators operating by hand. Officials said no one was in surgery at the time.

The power outage occurred at 3:20 p.m. when several electrical wires in the area exploded and fell to the ground. That explosion in the 2800 block of Westhaven Drive affected nearly 4,000 homes and businesses, Fire Capt. Jim Yost said.

Officials at the hospital at 3350 W. Ball Road, two miles away, said the emergency electrical backup system failed to start when the regular electricity was interrupted, leaving the hospital with no electricity for 40 minutes. Power to the hospital was fully restored at 4 p.m.

“All I can say now about the backup system is we are checking it out,” said supervising nurse Margaret Miller. “No one was in surgery. We had only two patients on respirators and plenty of staff to hand-ventilate them.”

“Everyone was just running around trying to fix it,” said Michele Cooper of Orange, who was at the hospital visiting a friend when the outage occurred.

Paul Bryant of Anaheim, whose father is in the intensive care unit, said a hospital representative called his home when the outage occurred.

“They were right on the phone to us,” his mother said. “They just called to let us know.”

There were about 30 patients in the 100-bed hospital Sunday, officials said, but none was in danger or had to be evacuated. Nurses are trained to manually operate patient respirators in case of emergencies such as power outages, a hospital spokeswoman said. During the outage, she said, ambulance companies were advised to divert emergency patients to other hospitals.

Fire dispatcher David Paschke said the first call about the electrical trouble came at 3:33 p.m. Apparently, a resident who saw the wires arc and heard the explosion, called the Police Department.

Yost said it looked like one high voltage wire had dropped on another. Ray Merchant, spokesman for the Anaheim Utilities Department, said about 250 feet of 12,000-volt line that runs along Ball Road fell down. No one was injured.

The area without electricity extended west from Magnolia Avenue to near Knott Avenue. Merchant said 94% of the customers in the area had power back within an hour and all power was expected to be restored by midnight.

Traffic signals were out at busy intersections on Ball Road and Beach Boulevard, Yost said, but only one accident was reported at Ball and Western Avenue.