A baby was delivered amid an evacuation of hundreds of patients at a local Los Angeles, California, hospital during the unprecedented Tropical Storm Hilary.
Amid the chaos, Adventist Health White Memorial President John Raffoul said at a news conference Tuesday that a baby was delivered during the evacuation process. Medical personnel used battery-operated flashlights to safely deliver a healthy baby.
Firefighting equipment remain outside Adventist Health White Memorial Hospital on Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Firefighters remain outside Adventist Health White Memorial Hospital on Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA. ((Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images))
Fire officials told FOX 11 that the mother and baby are doing well and receiving the care they need.
The Los Angeles Fire Department said in press release that the Specialty Care Center at White Memorial Hospital on Monday at 11:45 p.m. had a complete outage due to Tropical Storm Hilary, forcing officials to evacuate hundreds of patients.
The department said that officials evacuated 241 patients across the neonatal intensive care, OB/GYN and rehabilitation units. The department said that 28 of the patients were considered in critical care at the time of the evacuation.
“One of the issues that we ran into because of the fact that there’s a complete power outage here are zero lights. So, zero visibility,” explained LAFD Captain Cody Weireter. “We had no elevators working, so firefighter paramedics had to assist patients that were in critical condition to non-life-threatening condition down stairwells and get them to receiving ambulances.”
Cones block traffic on Boyle Avenue at Adventist Health White Memorial Hospital on Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Paramedics and firefighters worked in tandem to assist the 241 patients from the 6-story hospital that was shrouded in darkness.
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Since elevators were unavailable, authorities used specially designed “stair chairs,” gurneys and backboards to manually bring patients down the stairwells while maintaining any life support measures.
Firefighting equipment remain outside Adventist Health White Memorial Hospital on Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Raffoul explained that they experienced an outage at the main hospital campus at 3 a.m. Sunday, August 20 as the powerful storm battered the area and the three backup generators kicked in. Unfortunately, the generators failed overnight.
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Officials said that by 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, officials said that they evacuated all 28 critical patients, which included 17 pediatric patients and 11 adult patients, safely from the hospital and transferred the 241 noncritical patients to surrounding hospitals.
