About 150 patients were evacuated from the hospital June 28 after water rose rapidly in the parking lot and reached as high as 4 feet in the hospital’s basement, knocking out the electricity. The hospital announced plans to temporarily close June 29.
The organization said it is still assessing the damage, but an intensive care unit nurse at the facility said that three levels were damaged.
“There was the basement and the water but unfortunately, the damage from the roof, too, so it went through the whole three levels of floor and into the basement so every one of those floors and departments were damaged — that’s where the OR is, the ER, the pharmacy – everything was pretty much destroyed,” Joan Ballantyne, RN, the ICU nurse and co-chair of the nurses’ local bargaining unit, told Boston 25 News.
Massachusetts state officials in early July said there is a long road to recovery because most of the mechanical operations in the basement area were heavily damaged.
Norwood Hospital’s owner, Dallas-based Steward Healthcare, said despite being closed for a month to fix the damage, it remains committed to reopening Norwood Hospital as a full-service facility.
“We are still assessing the full extent of damage sustained by Norwood Hospital and we continue to work closely with state officials to determine a timeline for reopening, beginning with the Emergency Department which is our top priority,” Steward told Boston 25 News. “We will continue to keep our staff, local officials and the public updated.”
Health Systems 1199 SEIU, the union representing the hospital’s workers, also said in early July that 829 staffers were furloughed after the storm shut down the facility.
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