

Codi Wilson, CP24.com





A broken pipe on the second floor of St. Michael’s Hospital has caused flooding in the emergency department, prompting staff to close the ER until sometime on Wednesday.

The pipe burst at around 1 a.m. in the Cardinal Carter wing of the downtown hospital, Leslie Sheppard, a spokesperson for the hospital, told CP24 Tuesday morning.

While all other areas of the hospital are open, staff cannot accept trauma patients or emergency room walk-ins due to the water damage.

“Unfortunately water leaked through the walls and ceiling of our emergency department," Sheppard said, adding that the flow of water has been stopped.

Crews, she said, will be focusing on the cleanup and assessing what damage there may be to floors, ceilings and equipment.

On Tuesday afternoon, hospital staff said the emergency department would remain closed until Wednesday, when staff will reassess the situation and attempt to open up a small number of beds.

"There is a lot of medical technology in an emergency department but there is also the computers we all work on every day. So our IT people need to come in and look at those," she said.

"We’ve asked our vendors and our insurance adjusters to come in so they can look at every single piece of equipment and make sure it is safe for our patients."

Sheppard said the hospital is redirecting prospective patients to other hospitals and trauma centres in the interim.

When the flooding began, Sheppard said there were approximately 30 people in the hospital's emergency room, who were all either admitted or discharged at that time.

Patients who were receiving treatment in the hospital's emergency department have been relocated to other areas of the hospital, she said.

"There is redundancy built in to the system so we plan for what would happen in the rare event that something like this happens," Sheppard added.

"If you need to call 9-1-1, you can rest assured that the dispatcher and the emergency services, they known what to do. They are going to take you to the closest place to get the best possible care for you."

She said for those who have a non-life-threatening emergency, there is a list of other emergency departments in the Toronto area available their website.

Toronto paramedics spokesperson Evert Steenge says that while the ER department is closed, paramedics in the city have taken St. Mike’s off of their patient distribution system and diverted all trauma patients to the nearest trauma centre, which in this case is Sunnybrook.