Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital | Ambulances diverted due to ER water leak

When she arrived at work on Friday afternoon for her evening shift, nurse Annie Fournier had quite a surprise: a ruptured pipe had caused a major water leak in the ceiling of a monitored emergency room. , just before the shift change.

This emergency section welcomes patients who need closer follow-up, explains Mr.^me Fournier.

“There was at least two or three inches of water on the ground,” she testified to The Press after leaving the hospital in the evening. Fortunately, nothing happened to the patients, because they had to be disconnected from the cardiac resuscitators really quickly. »

Although she does not know the origin of the leak, she was able to confirm that water had flowed from the ceiling of this emergency section, and that a part had collapsed. “It was a deluge”, could hear The Press of a hospital employee, in conversation with a colleague, in an emergency room corridor.

During our visit around 8:30 p.m. on Friday, teams from the Qualinet company were busy cleaning up the damage. According to M^me Fournier, the fire services were also called to the scene to cut off the water as quickly as possible.

In total, around 20 patients were moved inside the hospital due to water damage, said Christian Merciari, spokesperson for the establishment.

Ambulances were rerouted to allow emergencies to deal with this unforeseen event. In the middle of the evening, the vacancy rate for the premises was 57% according to the Health Index dashboard, well below normal.

The breach in the water pipe was sealed in the evening. The emergencies were to resume its activities by the end of the evening or the night, assured Mr. Merciari on Friday.

Teamwork

The Maisonneuve-Rosemont team mobilized to deal with the disaster: several day nurses stayed to help the evening nurses for the transfer of patients, and the maintenance staff had to get their feet wet. , says M.^me Fournier.

The emergency room at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital was inaugurated in 2016. The cause of the damage was not known at the time these lines were written.

Funding for renovations to other parts of the hospital is the subject of negotiations between the Quebec government and the CIUSSS-de-l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal, revealed The Press at the end of January. The project could finally be done in phases and be much less ambitious than expected.

A worrying situation for patient care in the east of Montreal, said Mayor Valérie Plante in early February.

Also in January, the sit-in breathless nurses in the same emergency rooms had received media attention. The Minister of Health Christian Dubé had moved to the scene to calm the crisis, the day after a partial closure of one of the main emergencies in the metropolis during the night.