Flooding woes plague St Joe’s

(Update)

Here’s the latest on the flooding issue which has forced the partial closure of St. Joseph’s Hospital Charlton Campus leading to dozens of surgeries being cancelled and unknown costs to repair the problem.

People have been working all night to rectify the situation at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Charlton Campus. They have been able to get the emergency room back open partially. So people who walk to the emergency room or are dropped off are being accepted at the emergency room here now. Ambulances though are still being diverted. So of the 180 to 200 patients who come every day, 40 to 45 of those come by ambulance and those are still being diverted to other hosptials.

Now if you look down here, this is a fire hose. And this pipe is what burst in the floor above us, right outside of the operating suite. Nobody noticed immediately because that part of the hospital wasn’t open. Nobody noticed until the water started leaking into the operating rooms below. Today we saw the damage in the ultrasound rooms. Drywall wrecked, ceiling tiles wrecked, lots of water damage. So there’s still no elective surgery here at this hospital. They usually 30 to 40 a day and they hope to be back up and running by next week. Hamilton Health Sciences hospitals has had to create capacity to take the extra patients. It has been a strain, but because they cancelled elective surgeries, 70 of them today, and sent patients home when they could, they did manage with the extra capacity. Some surgeries will still be cancelled tomorrow. 60% of them will be going ahead.

I spoke with Doctor David Higgins, President of St. Joseph’s Healthcare today and he said the sterile supply department was the area that sterilizes equipment through the operating rooms, that was damaged during the flood and getting that room up and operational will be key to getting the 12 operating room up and going. Here’s what else he had to say to me a little bit earlier: “it’s been a lot of work staff, we’ve brought in speciality firms as well to help us with this work. They’ve been working 24/7, around the clock, assessing the damage, cleaning damaged equipemnt, damaged drywall, testing all the equipment, the ducts, the lining, making sure the equipment is safe and effective. That’s a lot of work that’s been going on since we spoke this time yesterday. We haven’t got a full list of the damage yet. We’re looking at the basic systems in the walls of the hospital. The things we’re most worried about are the specialized equipment in the operating rooms, we will test that carefully and we should have more information on that tomorrow. The pipe burst near a three-floor suite, the top floor being the reception area and pre-assessment area for anastesia. The level below that is the operating rooms itself and below that is where we process all the used equipment like scalpels and get them ready for use again. All of those were affected. The upper floor is just floor water which is like mopping up like you would do in your kitchen, but in a huge area. We’re working on that now and that’ll be cleaned soon. The operating rooms are quite significantly affected by water. We’re assessing them room by room by room to assess the impact and damage and when we can open them. And below that, we’re working with our sterile processing department. Again, we’ve done a lot of work there over the past 24 hours and again we hope to have better news on that tomorrow once we’ve got our testing completed.”

So, the hospital still doesn’t know why that pipe burst. The parts of the pipe and the valve are being tested elsewhere.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday night at about five o’clock there was a similar problem on an upper floor at the Juravinski Cancer Centre. Luckily people were still around at that hour to see and hear the rushing water in the halls and stairwells and even take an iPhone video.

All kinds of staff from nurses to porters scrambled to move patients and equipment into safe areas… and rescue hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of chemo drugs as water started pouring into the pharmacy — they moved everything over to the juravinski main hospital pharmacy and didn’t lose any. after closing for much of yesterday the hospital was taking patients again today, although it’s not back to full capacity. half the chemotherapy area is still under hoarding… that was the worst hit area, and the hospital has had to prioritize chemo patients. you can see from the footage we shot today, there’s a lot of medical equipment and beds piled into rooms that would normally be used for chemotherapy — while other parts of the floor are still being dried out. medical records and parts of the radiation treatment area also had to be rescued.

Dr. Ralph Meyer is the President of the Juravinski Hospital Cancer Centre: “The process of the flood sets of a fire alarm and the fd was here, went to the source. we asked them to come down, we were concerned, the evidence of water through ceiling tiles, sagging, one of them actually collapsed into one of the patient areas that had been vacated. the fd poked some of the tiles to have them come down in a controlled fashion. the whole concern then is the water tracking on floors and where does it go when you don’t see it.”

It will be weeks before chemotherapy is back up to 100 per cent operation. But they should be at 75 per cent capacity by Friday and the most urgent patients are getting care.
On Tuesday night, the cancer centre was planning to use the main Juravinski Hospital to take the overflow from the cancer centre. That changed the next morning when St. Joe’s flooded. All hospitals with ER’s and OR’s in our region have created capacity by sending home any patients they could and cancelling elective surgeries. Those other hospitals are now taking the 180-200 patients that visit the St. Joe’s ER every day. They are all getting increased volumes of patients, but I’m told it’s manageable so far.