Governor Brian Kemp on Monday toured the damage at Grady Memorial Hospital caused by a water pipe burst two weeks ago that shut down almost a third of the hospital’s rooms.
Kemp also got a look at Grady’s new mobile hospital unit, which sits in the ambulance bay and was shipped in from North Carolina after Kemp declared a state of emergency in Fulton County as a result of the flooding.
The tour of the three floors affected by the flooding was not open to the media. But Kemp said the damage is “severe, as you can imagine.”
“When I first heard ... that a 24-inch water main had busted,” Kemp said, “I didn’t have to understand what the damage was gonna be like — I know. If you pour a gallon of water out on the floor, it’s a lot. So water coming out of a 24-inch water main literally destroys streets when it happens underground.”
The governor said the Dec. 7 pipe burst “could’ve been catastrophic,” since it happened the day 100,000 people were in town for the SEC Championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Kemp thanked state officials and hospitals around the city for responding quickly to the situation. He said Georgia Power provided a generator after part of the hospital lost power, and Home Depot sent equipment to Grady, including fans to dry damaged walls and floors.
The cause of the pipe break is still under investigation, Grady said. Hospital spokeswoman Denise Simpson said the water pipe was located between the sixth and seventh floors. When it burst, water flooded down onto the fourth, sixth and fifth floors.
The hospital’s postpartum department, a nursery space for new mothers and their babies, is located on the fourth floor and had to be moved as a result of the flooding, Simpson said. The other damaged floors housed general medical-surgery patients.
Meanwhile, Grady’s emergency room is not accepting all patients, but is treating trauma, stroke and burn patients. Grady, which normally sees 450 emergency patients each day, is now able to treat about 200 a day.
About 220 of the hospital’s 700 rooms remain out of commission. Monday marked the opening of the mobile ER unit in the hospital’s ambulance bay, which will offset some of the beds lost due to the flooding. The mobile ER was equipped with 13 hospital beds but can fit up to 30.
Grady still is diverting hundreds of patients to other Atlanta hospitals, which are continuing to feel the impact of the incident at Grady.
Emory, Northside Hospital and Piedmont Healthcare each said their hospitals accepted about 30 patient transfers from Grady shortly after the flooding. But they said it’s hard to quantify the overall effect Grady’s emergency room diversion had on their operations, since they do not track which patients in their ERs would have gone to Grady.
This is already a busy time for hospitals, with flu season beginning and patients choosing to have surgeries before the end of the year.
For almost a week after the pipe burst, Grady’s ER went on total diversion, meaning ambulances were told to not to bring patients to a hospital that advertises itself as the busiest trauma center on the East Coast.
This article was written by J.D. Capelouto, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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