Troy, N.Y.-based St. Mary's Hospital closed its emergency department and redirected patients to nearby hospitals due to a power outage Wednesday that lasted nearly five hours, the timesunion reports.
Scarlet Clement-Buffoline, vice president of administration and specialty services for St. Mary's, told the publication a faulty generator led to the outage. The generator had turned on during a snowstorm Tuesday, but the storm damaged the unit's transfer shift, according to the report. To fix the problem, officials had to cut power to the hospital's first floor, which houses the ED and a medical imaging unit.
Officials cut the electricity at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday and turned it back on around 7 p.m. Nine patients were being treated in the ED before the outage. By the time the power outage occurred, seven of the patients in the ED had been discharged, one was transferred to Troy, N.Y.-based Samaritan Hospital and one was transferred to Albany, N.Y.-based St. Peter's Hospital. The hospital did not accept additional patients during the outage.
No other parts of the hospital were affected, the report states.