The Chatham campus of the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance is still running on emergency power systems after a morning outage.
A number of systems are back online, but full functionality has not been restored.
On-call administration and engineering services responded to the initial power failure, which was the result of an electrical failure at 3:30 a.m. At 6 a.m., as repairs were being made, a breaker blew, causing a bigger power failure across the site.
Chief Operating Officer Sarah Padfield said the power outage is expected to last most of the day and is hopeful that the issue will be fixed later this afternoon.
Internal systems such as the air conditioning units and the main elevators have been affected. As a result, surgical procedures, select ambulatory care visits and routine diagnostics procedures have been suspended and are to be re-scheduled.
“This is not something we take lightly,” said Padfield.
She added that some patients have been preparing for their operations for months and now must wait even longer.
Padfield assured the re-scheduling is necessary, however, “our top priority is not to risk the health and safety of the patients.”
Patients are currently being notified of these changes.
The organization’s ability to support emergency procedures, and the inpatient and emergency services have not been affected. However certain patients being transported by ambulance may be re-routed to other sites today.
There were no injuries or patients directly impacted by the power failure. CKHA is continuing to assess the full impact of the outage.
