Weiss Memorial Hospital may not be operating normally for weeks after AC failure
Hospital says they are still open for walk-ins
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Ambulances are being directed away from Chicago's Weiss Memorial Hospital due to an air conditioning failure.
There were no patients in the hospital as of Wednesday morning. A spokesperson said that another one of the building's AC units is back online, providing some relief.
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The emergency room at Weiss Memorial Hospital is open for walk-ins, but the facility is still re-directing ambulances after the hospital's AC system failed.
Officials said it could be a few more weeks before things get back to normal as repairs are made.
In a statement, Weiss Memorial called what happened "a catastrophic loss" of its air-conditioning system.
They blamed previous owners of the hospital for not properly maintaining its aging infrastructure.
"Many of our previous owners decided to kick the can down the road, and a lot of upgrades that should have happened to the AC system unfortunately did not happen," Resilience Healthcare CEO Dr. Manoj Prasad said.
Resilience Healthcare acquired the hospital more than two years ago.
Prasad says the 73-year-old building's air conditioning system ran its course 20 years ago, and that they cross their fingers when they switch it on for the summer.
That luck ran out when, a week and a half ago, they turned it on and only one of the system's four chillers came online.
The other three were not working.
"When we brought them back up from the winter to the summer they started springing leaks; they would trip," Prasad said.
The hospital alerted city and state officials and immediately put a contingency plan together.
By Tuesday, temperatures reached nearly 90 degrees, and hospital officials evacuated 45 patients.
Some who have been inside the hospital said the conditions are uncomfortable.
"I don't even sleep at night," discharged patient Steven Acosta said. "The room, the vent, is blowing air, but it is blowing nothing but hot air, no AC going on. To be honest, it's like an oven."
Weiss said its staff is transferring most of their patients to their sister hospital, West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park. They've also reached out to other hospitals for help.
The hospital says the outpatient areas and its supporting areas have not been affected by the outage, and will stay open.
ER walk-ins will also be transferred if they need to be admitted for care.
"Anybody that came to the ED and had to be admitted, we called West Suburban, talked to our docs there and transferred them over to West Sub," Andrea Saviozci said.
Once the repairs are done, the hospital will need to be cooled to a certain temperature before normal operations can resume.
"They have ordered the parts. As soon as they arrive, and by the time they get it installed and building cooled down, it's a guesstimate. But we're looking at a couple of weeks," Prasad said.
Prasad says the cost of a new unit could run at least $250,000.
