A friend of mine told me about a freak accident last week in which a woman in Oklahoma was on life support and a storm came through. The storm knocked out power and patients on respirators all died because there was no back up power at the hospital. 1: is this true? 2: How can a hospital possibly operate without back up power? I’m not sure what city this happened in, and I couldn’t find anything on the news sites. Anyone?
I found nothing on Google News. I’ll call BS on this one.
It might help if I said it caused patient “DEATHS.” Maybe some nice mod will change that for me. Stupid brain. Stupid! Stupid!
The friend I heard it from said a girl in her “technology camp” lost her mother to this last week.
Something like this would make national news. Every major wire service would have picked this up within hours of it happening. The fact that there is nothing on it is highly suspicious.
Hospitals have very expensive and redundant battery backups that would prevent that type of situation.
rereading the OP, the answer to your question is no. No hospital could operate without back up power. If they didn’t have a backup power system in place and thouroughly tested, the hospital would be without the one biggest thing that keeps hospitals running. Insurance. No hospital would be insurable without backup power.
Thanks guys. I still haven’t been able to find anything. Sounds like a very unnecessary bullshit story to get out of tech camp.
It may be slightly more believable that some patient(s) who rely on medical equipment at home may have died due to power outages, but I haven’t seen any stories on this recently either.
Even at-home medical equipment comes with battery backup as a matter of course.
Anyone else think that this was one of those “baby boom 9 months after a big power outage” stories? 
Our hospital has diesel generators capable of running the major functions for several weeks. In the event of a major diasater (in our area that would mean a major hurricane), we could keep the place running as long as we could get fuel.
Kalhoun, it might be fun, and a good lesson in urban legend hunting, to attept to get names and dates from your friend’s friend. My guess is that it didn’t really happen to your friend’s friend, but instead happened to a friend of her friend, and on down the line.
A couple I actually knew died during the Montreal ice storm and power failure of 1997. They were in their 90s and lived two blocks away. A neighbour (whom I also knew) tried to get them to go to a shelter, but they refused. They tried to set some kind of fire and died of smoke inhalation. No joke and definitely no urban myth.
During his career my father was in charge of the construction of several hospitals.
All of them had back up generators that were capable of handling the necessary loads.
I recall being present at a test of the backup system at one hospital. The requirement was that the OR not be without power for more than 60 seconds.
So, before the building was accepted we all trooped into the OR and they had somebody pull the main power to the building. 49 seconds later the lights came on in the OR. After the test my dad took me to see the generator. To this day it is the biggest stationary engine I have ever seen.
I work in a federal government building that is considerably less important, human-life-wise, than a hospital. We have a backup generator that kicks in within 50 seconds of power outage, and can supply the building for 8 hours.