Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Tech­ni­cians and en­gi­neers at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC), Mt Hope, spent most of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon work­ing to re­store elec­tric­i­ty through­out the en­tire fa­cil­i­ty af­ter a bolt of light­ning caused a pow­er out­age at the hos­pi­tal.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Ltd at the en­gi­neer­ing sec­tion of the hos­pi­tal, chair­man of the North-Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) Dr Tim Gopeesingh said de­spite a tem­po­rary dis­rup­tion in con­nec­tiv­i­ty, ac­tiv­i­ties were re­stored with­in half an hour, with no pow­er loss in the In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) or op­er­at­ing the­atres, as they func­tioned on a sep­a­rate elec­tri­cal sys­tem.

Clin­ics, he said, were al­so tem­porar­i­ly dis­rupt­ed, but re­stored.

As of 4 pm, Dr Gopeesingh re­port­ed that elec­tric­i­ty was re­stored to 80 per cent of the hos­pi­tal and was grate­ful that stand­by gen­er­a­tors in the en­gi­neer­ing de­part­ment were able to pow­er the fa­cil­i­ty.

He, how­ev­er, lament­ed that many as­pects of the hos­pi­tal’s util­i­ties, from the elec­tri­cal sys­tem to plumb­ing and wa­ter sup­ply, were sig­nif­i­cant­ly aged and in ur­gent need of up­grade.

“If we hadn’t put in the ma­jor, big trans­former, if we didn’t do what we did, the whole place would have been cat­a­stroph­ic for hours and hours, and we would not have been able to keep func­tion­ing at this com­plex.

“This com­plex is about 37 years old, and I don’t want to bring pol­i­tics in­to it, be­cause I’m won­der­ing what the last board did for ten years when they sat on their hands and al­lowed the elec­tri­cal sys­tem to be in sham­bles.

“The waste­water sys­tem ... there are nine pumps; all nine pumps weren’t func­tion­ing, and the waste­water was back­ing up; the potable wa­ter sup­ply, the fresh­wa­ter sup­ply were gone; the lifts in the sys­tem are 37 years old; no lifts were changed.”

Gopeesingh said he has re­peat­ed­ly urged the en­gi­neer­ing staff at the hos­pi­tal to keep test­ing stand­by gen­er­a­tors to en­sure they are pre­pared and func­tion­ing for any large-scale out­age.

Pho­tos of the out­age were shared on so­cial me­dia by the pres­i­dent of the T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA), Idi Stu­art, who raised con­cerns over the elec­tri­cal out­age.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Stu­art said he was aware that elec­tric­i­ty had been re­stored to most of the hos­pi­tal’s units and wards but said he was still con­cerned over the in­ci­dent.

Ear­li­er this week, Stu­art raised con­cern over what he de­scribed as a short­age of nurs­es at hos­pi­tals na­tion­wide and said that such in­ci­dents, which af­fect­ed ma­chin­ery and equip­ment, placed fur­ther strain on staff to keep pa­tients alive.

“ICUs, HDUs, and car­di­ol­o­gy units can­not go with­out elec­tric­i­ty for even a minute, far less for an hour or more... that would lead to death; there’s no two ways about it, par­tic­u­lar­ly as we don’t have enough nurs­ing staff to be re­sus­ci­tat­ing peo­ple at the same time... mul­ti­ple peo­ple at the same time.

“We’re heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on the ma­chin­ery.”

Stu­art said he agreed with Gopeesingh’s com­plaints over the qual­i­ty of in­fra­struc­ture at the hos­pi­tal, not­ing it was a long­stand­ing is­sue for many staff.

“We are good at ex­tend­ing enor­mous sums, but when it comes to main­te­nance, we con­tin­ue to do a poor job.

“So I would con­cur this is part of a larg­er prob­lem, and it has been on­go­ing for far too long.”

Guardian Me­dia Ltd al­so spoke to NCRHA CEO Davlin Thomas, who said $25 mil­lion had been in­vest­ed in elec­tri­cal up­grades over the past few years, not­ing that, in ad­di­tion to trans­form­ers, re­lay sys­tems and oth­er up­grades, a so­lar con­tin­gency sys­tem was in­stalled in crit­i­cal ar­eas (the ICUs and oth­er emer­gency de­part­ments).