Bellevue Hospital Center, New York City's flagship public hospital and the premier trauma center in Manhattan, shut down Wednesday after fuel pumps for its backup power generators failed, and it worked into the night to evacuate the 300 patients left in its darkened building. There were 725 patients there when Hurricane Sandy hit.
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The National Guard was called in at Bellevue Hospital Center. More Photos »
At a news conference Wednesday night, Alan Aviles, the president of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs Bellevue, described third-world conditions, with no hot water, no lab or radiology services and pails of water hauled up the stairs to use for flushing toilets.
After pumping out 17 million gallons of water from the basement, the water is still two and a half feet deep in the cavernous basement where the fuel pumps apparently shorted out and became inoperable — unable to feed the 13th-floor backup generators, Mr. Aviles said.
"If we can get this hospital back up within two to three weeks we will be doing really well," he said. "Nothing has happened like this in Bellevue's 275-year history."
Bellevue is on the East River, in the blacked-out portion of Manhattan south of 34th Street.
An evacuation had been under way for two days, doctors said, with the most critical patients and all but a few infants transferred to other hospitals before Wednesday, as volunteers and then the National Guard mounted a bucket-brigade to supply diesel fuel to the generators.
The evacuation had been a "slow trickle" since Monday, when the storm surge from the hurricane hit, said Matthew McCarty, 24, a New York University medical student who had been volunteering at Bellevue, doing everything from carrying patients and holding flashlights to ferrying fuel to the generators on the 13th floor.
Outside the hospital on Wednesday, ambulances lined up to ferry patients elsewhere, and inside, relatives sought information about where patients had been sent.
The Greater New York Hospital Association, a hospital trade group, worked into Wednesday evening with the State Health Department and emergency management officials to find beds for the patients at other hospitals, some of which had just absorbed more than 300 patients from NYU Langone Medical Center, also a casualty of failed backup power.
Brian Conway, a spokesman for the hospital association, said:
"The New York hospital community has always come through in finding beds for evacuated patients, and we're confident that'll happen again, but we're pushing the envelope right now. This is an unprecedented challenge."
The Health Department authorized "surge-capacity plans" that allow hospitals to accept patients beyond their normal capacity in a disaster, if necessary converting nonclinical space like conference rooms and auditoriums into dorm-style wards. Appeals for other hospitals to take Bellevue patients went out at midday.
Among those responding was Continuum Health Partners, which offered to take as many as 200 patients at its St. Luke's and Roosevelt Hospitals, Jim Mandler, a spokesman said.
Mount Sinai Hospital, which took in 64 emergency evacuees from NYU Langone on Monday, offered to take about 40 patients from Bellevue, and Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn offered spaces for 50 patients.
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