Power outage at White Memorial Hospital in Boyle Heights forces patient evacuations

BOYLE HEIGHTS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Emergency crews evacuated hundreds of patients, including NICU infants and other people on ventilators, from White Memorial Hospital in Boyle Heights following a major power outage.

The outage was reported around 11 p.m. Monday at the hospital's Specialty Care Center, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. That part of the hospital contains the NICU, OB GYN and Special Aid rehabilitation departments, fire officials said.

"It was a full blackout, no power for the entire facility," said Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley.

At least 241 patients were impacted, and most of them were moved to another building of the hospital that did have power. About 28 of those patients were considered in critical condition and were rushed to other hospitals in ambulances, including 14 infants from the NICU.

Firefighters had to physically carry patients down stairs because the elevators were not working.

"Because of the fact that no elevators were working... firefighters had to work together in conjunction with doctors on site and provide that same level of care that you would have with a ventilator or with special equipment and then go down those flights of stairs," said LAFD Captain Cody Weireter.

Officials also said a woman gave birth to a baby girl during the complete blackout, and battery-powered flashlights were used to make the delivery happen. Both the mother and baby were taken to a different hospital and are OK.

"Our supervising nurses were there, physicians were attending, and what they ended up doing was putting together a whole bunch of flashlights and shining them up at the ceiling and illuminating the room so there was plenty of light," said hospital spokesperson Grace Hauser.

During a press conference Tuesday morning, officials said the hospital also lost its main power at the height of Tropical Storm Hilary and they had been working on back-up generators since then.

Overnight, the main hospital building lost power once again.

The hospital's president, John Raffoul, said that they are investigating the issue.

"We don't know the cause of the double failure that we had here yet, other than the fact that we had a major storm that hit us here in Southern California," he said. "Those generators are supposed to last for about three days. However, this [Monday morning] at 1 o'clock, we experienced an outage of our emergency generators as well."

A new back-up generator arrived at the hospital Tuesday and crews were working to restore the power by 2 p.m.

No one was seriously injured during the power outage. Firefighters left the hospital around noon Tuesday, but hospital officials said they still have a lot of work to do.

"We are in the mode of investigating; we don't know the cause of the double failure that we had here at the hospital yet other than the fact that we had a major storm," said Raffoul.

Correction: An earlier version of the story stated a woman gave birth to twins. She gave birth to one baby girl during the blackout, but twin infants were transported during the evacuations.