My bad night!!

[banditrn]

It was about 3:30 AM, everything under control, was about to get things ready for my morning med pass, when the lights went out!! And stayed out!

The fire doors closed, and there was some kind of alarm going off, but I couldn't locate it right away. A few emergency lights came on, but only in the halls, so I had to fumble around in the dark med room to find our flashlites.

There are only two of us there at nite, so I sent the CNA down one side, and I went down the other to check the patients - no sign of fire, etc., no bad weather.

I had assumed that an emergency generator would come on, but it didn't, so I finally called the administrator. Her lights were out too. She had to go to the home of the maintenance guy to get him to come start the generator. In the meantime, the aide and I were taking the portable O2 tanks to the rooms for the patients on oxygen - carrying flashlites, of course.

But thru all this the call lites still worked!! Kind of sickly, but they still came on - and of course, this was the time that everyone chose to go to the BR!! Or wanted a pain pill.

I finally told the administrator if she expected us to work in the dark, she was going to have to supply us with headlamps!

Turned out that some big transformer blew!

[NoWaNrN, ASN, RN]

That really sucked!

[Bumashes, MSN, APRN, NP]

WOW!!! Just wow.

[vampiregirl, BSN, RN]

Doesn't sound like an enlightening experience!

...Sorry, couldn't resist. I was on an ambulance call the other night during a storm and the lights went out when we walked in the residence. For some reason EMS people have a very warped sense of humor, and it tends to come out in the darkest moments. (Ooops, sorry again.)

Anyways, you do have my sincere sympathy, your experience didn't sound like a lot of fun.

[suebird3]

Lord! Things happen at the worst times, don't they!?

Suebird

[ONSnrs]

eeeeesh! The headlight idea sounds good though, definately something to think about for disaster/hurricane nursing.

[CapeCodMermaid, RN]

Not to sound like Management, but are you Joint Commission Accredited? You could write it up as a disaster and do your plan. We had to evacuate a wing of the building once because a liquid 02 container was broken and was spewing everywhere...I was the only manager there...went smoothly so we wrote it up for our disaster drill book.

[LoriAlabamaRN]

I totally sypathize, I had this happen once as well. At about 3am with a big storm in the area, our lights went out and the backup failed. All I had was my penlight, but fortunately dh kept a big flashlight in the car, and I ran and got it. I was lugging O2 tanks and desperately paging our maintenance head, finally he responded, came in and got the generator working. It was incredibly stressful though!!!

[banditrn]

I just couldn't believe the generator wasn't set to come on automatically! Tried calling maintenance, but it turns out that he has a portable phone that wouldn't work because the electricity was out!! That's when I called the administrator, and she went over and pounded on his door.

The thing I found funny was that the call lites still worked thru it all - wouldn't you just know it! But I was grateful for that, at least, so I knew that they could call if they needed something.

I was thinking, tho, as we were running around, "What a Mickey Mouse type of operation."

[banditrn]

Not to sound like Management, but are you Joint Commission Accredited? You could write it up as a disaster and do your plan. We had to evacuate a wing of the building once because a liquid 02 container was broken and was spewing everywhere...I was the only manager there...went smoothly so we wrote it up for our disaster drill book.

Mermaid - This is a LTC facility in Iowa, and I don't think that JCAHO does anything with those - I could very well be wrong, tho.

I can't even get them to have a fire drill inservice, so I doubt that they'll do anything with the 'lites out' scenario. It all worries me, so I've decided that I'm going to make the maintenace guy take me around to show me everything.