Cheyenne VA Medical Center

Tanya Hood, Cheyenne VA Pharmacist, counsels a patient during the power outage on Tuesday. Ms. Hood says, "Even though the lights went out, we still are proud to serve our patients. Events like today's mean that we get to find alternative ways to make that happen."

In the cold, dark morning hours of December 22, 2010, a water pipe in one of the construction areas on the exterior of Cheyenne VA breaks.

Water saturates the construction area outside of the main facility and seeps into a large power conduit. This causes the safety feature of fault protection to trip the main power circuit to the hospital, shutting down power to the main campus.

Immediately, the facility’s bank of 30,000 watt emergency power generators roars to life and begins to supply specific patient areas with electricity. Facility leadership initiates the emergency operations plan. Through the cascade callback system and as a result of regular drills with the emergency operation plan, specific VA staff report for emergency duty assignments.

The top priority during an emergency at a VA Medical Facility is to insure patient and staff safety, minimize the infringement to the delivery of patient care and to return to normal business operations as quickly as possible.

 Liz Lowery, Cheyenne VAMC Associate Director and Incident Commander during the power outages comments, “Emergency response is at the core of our business processes. Planning, exercising and evaluating emergency response is a regular function of our organization. Overall, I am very pleased with the response to the power outage. Staff quickly came together to keep patients safe and as many appointments on schedule as possible.”

Some examples of the flexible and innovative adaptations that VA staff and patients worked within were areas were lit with battery operated lanterns for patient interviews and pharmacy counseling, providers used headlamps to conduct diabetic foot care exams and laptop computers with a secure connection to VA’s network were quickly provided by the responsive IT staff.

Lowery says, “Unplanned events like this test the character of an organization. In real time, they test the processes and systems that are in place, relationships between staff to work together to achieve a common mission and ability to produce results quickly. Today’s event was unplanned and was handled very timely and appropriately.”

The water pipe that caused the flooding and power outage was quickly located and repaired. POwer to most areas at the VA Medical Center power to most areas was restored by 11:00 and total power was restored at approximately 12:30. Work on the loading dock expansion will resume tomorrow.