ANAHEIM : Probe of Hospital Blackout Sought

Calling a 40-minute blackout Sunday afternoon at Anaheim General Hospital “an unusual occurrence,” a state health official said Monday that she wants a full explanation of the incident.

“We expect to see something in writing from the facility, explaining what happened,” said Jacqueline A. Lincer, district administrator for the state Department of Health Services licensing and certification division in Santa Ana. “You got to have a backup system” to run not only lights and refrigerators but often pumps for intravenous solutions, Lincer said, adding: “And it’s expected the backup will kick in.”

By Monday afternoon, the hospital had failed to notify her office of the event, said Lincer, who vowed to look into the situation immediately.

At Anaheim General, marketing director Brenda Beck blamed the hospital blackout on a defective battery in the generator. She said the generator was checked May 30 and appeared to be fine. But it didn’t work on Sunday.

An outage hit the hospital and 4,000 nearby homes and businesses at 3:20 p.m. Sunday when several electrical wires exploded and fell to the ground.

Beck said that no patient was harmed by the outage. When the power failed, two patients were on ventilators but nurses took over from the machinery, helping them breathe by manually pumping ventilator bags, she said. In addition, Beck said, the hospital asked that all ambulances be diverted to other facilities. About 30 patients were in the 99-bed facility when the blackout occurred.