NFPA Journal - January/February 2013 - (Page 51)
Artist’s rendering of the $500 million Mercy Hospital Joplin, scheduled to open in early 2015.
for us. When the tornado hit, the transformers that provide normal power to the facility were lost almost immediately. The backup power system managed to kick on, but went out a few seconds later. The generators and fuel tanks for the backup system were located outside the building and were destroyed by the air handlers and other debris blowing off the roof. So there was no power of any kind inside the hospital, not even for criticalcare areas. There were patients hooked up to life-support equipment that was no longer functioning, and hospital staff were fumbling around in the dark and the debris trying to find the manual equipment to try to care for these people. Electricity is the lifeblood of the hospital, and suddenly losing it, in those circumstances, made things very, very difficult. The new facility will have a separate central utility plant that will be housed in a hardened concrete structure with storm doors. That structure will be partially buried, and the rest of it will be surrounded by concrete and brick. It will also house the diesel generators for the backup power supply, so they’ll be protected against debris or other external elements, and the fuel tanks will be located underground and similarly protected. Code requires us to keep 24 hours of fuel on hand, but the new emergency power system will have 96 hours of fuel—so this isn’t just a standby system. A lot of hospitals use standby generators, which aren’t made to run for a week, or a couple of days, or even eight hours. They’re made to run for a few hours at a time, in case you have a power outage or something of fairly short duration. So when hospitals have more serious problems, like a Hurricane Sandy, you hear about standby systems where the generators overheat and don’t
stay on, and then you have a big problem. So you need a backup system that will run for a long time.
Lesson Learned: Install Backup Power for the Backup Power
In the old hospital, when we lost the emergency generators, we lost everything—there was nothing left. In the new facility, critical areas will use an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), which is a battery backup. Any piece of life-support equipment in the hospital will be on a UPS battery attached to the equipment itself. As long as that equipment is there, it will have a UPS system to power it for a short time until somebody can get to the patients safely. Battery backup will also be installed in stairwells and in the safe areas. Even if we lose power during the day, those interior spaces will still be dark without power, so we need to be able to light those areas to aid with evacuation even if the worst happens and the emergency generators don’t work.
Lesson Learned: Harden the Emergency Command Center
center set up in the existing hospital, but without any power and with all the problems in the building, it really couldn’t be used. So it had to be set up nearby, in the convention center of a Holiday Inn, so they could communicate all the emergency numbers and other information to hospital staff and others. The emergency command center in the new facility will be in a protected space on the lower level, essentially a large conference room with all the communications and other devices in there for the emergency management team. There will also be a portable emergency management trailer, with all the same communications capabilities as the command center, parked at a location other than the hospital. We had a portable trailer for the old hospital, but it was parked at the hospital at the time the tornado hit, which we discovered wasn’t such a great idea, because when we lost the hospital, we lost the trailer, too.
John Farnen is executive director of strategic projects for Mercy in Chesterfield, Missouri. Scott Sutherland is executive editor of NFPA Journal.
There was an emergency command
Photograph: Courtesy of Mercy Hospital Joplin
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013 NFPA JOURNAL
51
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - January/February 2013
NFPA Journal - January/february 2013
Contents
First Word
In a Flash
Perspectives
Firewatch
Research
Heads Up
Structural Ops
In Compliance
Buzzwords
Outreach
Electrical Safety
Wildfire Watch
Rebuilding a Hospital
Prepping for the Worst
Chicago View: A Preview of the 2013 NFPA Conference & Expo
Long Time Coming
Section Spotlight
What’s Hot
Looking Back
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