Power cut hits hospital

The trust says "no patients suffered"

A health trust is investigating a power cut at a flagship PFI hospital which occurred as two critically ill patients were being operated on.

To keep the patients alive, nurses were forced to use hand-operated ventilators.

It happened at the £67m Bishop Auckland hospital which was opened in June 2002.

Lights went out for 20 minutes on Wednesday at the 347-bed hospital after an electrical malfunction at the site.

Staff used manual life-support equipment to ensure that two patients in the critical care unit could continue to breathe.

Bishop Auckland MP Derek Foster said he demanded an explanation for the incident from John Saxby, chief executive of the County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS trust.

The switch that should have automatically reconnected the mains supply to the hospital failed to work

Hospital statement

He later said Mr Saxby had assured him there were adequate procedures in place to deal with the power failure and that an inquiry had started.

Problems occurred shortly after a failure in the external supply around 0600 BST on Wednesday which then triggered back-up systems to keep equipment running.

In a statement, the trust said: "Initially there were no difficulties, the back up systems at the hospital functioned correctly, the standby generators started and power to the hospital was maintained.

"The problem occurred a short while later when the main external power supply was restored.

"Although the generator switched off, as it should have done, the switch that should have automatically reconnected the mains supply to the hospital failed to work."

The hospital was without power for 20 minutes, but the spokesman said no patients suffered as a result.

They said alterations had been made to the system to enable the generator to continue to run, in the event of a power failure, until an engineer attended the site and supervised the change back to mains supply.