One of the bigger concerns for Nevada County during the Public Safety Power Shutoff was the patients and the operations at Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital. The facility was open during the power shutoff, but was on emergency backup generators. Hospital C-E-O Doctor Brian Evans says that means there were things they couldn’t do…

No elective surgeries or outpatient procedures. Also, some buildings were closed, including the breast imaging center and oncology. Evans says the hospital was running on two large generators, which can get expensive to operate in a hurry…

Evans says the hospital staff prepares for emergencies such as power outages, but this outage created a special problem because it was so wide spread. The generators at the hospital worked, but others were impossible to find.

–gf