By MIKE LEE

Major flooding triggered by torrential rains on Sept. 29 created havoc with impassable roads, flooded basements and subway stations, and sudden power outages across New York City.

In Brooklyn’s Bedford–Stuyvesant community, a power failure caused Woodhull Hospital to close, forcing an evacuation of 120 patients from the Health+Hospitals facility.

Con Edison informed hospital officials that, in order to make the necessary repairs to the voltage feeder line that caused the outage, they would have to shut down Woodhull’s emergency backup generator to restore power to the hospital.

Hospital leaders and New York City officials met to coordinate plans and decided to evacuate patients and staff as quickly as possible.

“The initial reports I received were the power went out at the hospital and the situation was rather chaotic,” said Carmen De León, President of New York City Health Services Employees Local 768. “They did very well once Health+Hospitals established communications and implemented their plan.”

DC 37 members, including workers from Local 768, acted quickly.

“The workers at Woodhull evacuated patients, including those critically ill, to other area hospitals,” De León said. “Some of my members, outpatient social workers, stayed behind to help the hospital evacuate inpatient psychiatric patients.”

These patients were among the last evacuated, because the hospital had to find a facility to safely place them.

“These social workers are tasked with working with outpatient psychiatric clients, but now we’re dealing with hospitalized patients, so they don’t necessarily have a relationship with them,” De León said.

The social workers were placed on standby until needed to assist with the patients. According to De León, there were issues with contacting the Local 768 members due to the power outage, but the situation was resolved in the end.

“It is a huge task to empty out a hospital—this is not easy. I really think they did their best under the circumstances,” De León said.

The remaining question for hospital staff was now that Woodhull was closed, where were they going to be deployed?

For Local 768 members, certain titles are licensed to perform specific duties, such as Social Worker and Dental Clinician. However, some agencies and departments have different policies that allow members to continue their work at another hospital or clinic when redeployed. This was not the case at Woodhull, where many were underutilized in their temporary reassignments.

“It’s not anything that was within Health+Hospitals’ control, but I hope that they have a preparedness plan in the future because this will not be the last time we have a flash flood,” De León said. “However, I believe they did well under the circumstances, and the members weren’t overly upset. They were more concerned for the patients.”

After the hospital’s electrical system was restored, Woodhull began taking patients on Oct. 7, and outpatient services returned to their weekday schedule on Oct. 10.