Electrical Fire in Covid-19 Hospitals A Preventable Emergency
Aseries of frequent and unfortunate fire incidents in COVID Hospitals has been a cause of concern since the last year. The COVID emergency is not going away soon and all the emergency infrastructure built to fight the pandemic poses serious risks given its weak foundation.
Power Systems are particularly vulnerable given the sudden increase in non-linear loads comprising of ventilators and related medical devices – a crucial defense aid in fighting COVID.
With improper electrical systems, further marred by non-compliance to electrical standards and poor workmanship, hospitals are staring at the high risk of weakening the immune systems of their electrical systems and leading to fire!
If courage is contagious, ignorance is pandemic!
The pandemic has put stress on the Hospitals like never before. Almost unprepared for the scale and nature of COVID’s medical emergency, it is natural for the Hospital’s Management to prioritize the most urgent and important objective – treatment of patients. And often, amongst all the essential tasks, it is the minor ones that generally get the least priority and lead to trouble later. Thus, poor Power Quality (PQ) and electrical safety issues are bound to receive less attention in a situation where patients are increasingly struggling for medication and treatment. But the seemingly minor electrical issues have taken a severe turn and caused a fire in the establishments. More importantly, fire incidents in hospitals cannot be dislodged as one-time exceptions, as a closer look clearly highlights the pattern and the nature of risks looming over the Hospitals.
Protecting Hospitals from failure
Hospitals have been tirelessly operating in the pandemic, constantly stressed for resources including space, medication and care. City after city has built large make-shift hospital facilities. From sports stadiums to hotels, a variety of facilities are being turned into makeshift healthcare facilities. Given the large scale of the problem and short availability of time and resources, very little can be assured for standards and underlying quality of work for the electrical systems. This only means, the risks to the safety and reliability of power systems are higher than ever before.
While the doctors, nurses, medical professionals, and researchers are working day and night, providing maximal care to the COVID-19 patients, the risks are not restricted to COVID alone. Hospitals are up against yet another hectic and exhausting challenge – ensuring uptime, safety and proper functioning of all critical devices and systems, mostly driven by electricity, in an extremely challenging situation. Any technical difficulty can become overwhelming for the hospital facility in such a stressed situation. A strong indication of the stressed and crumbling systems is the events of electrical fires in recent times in the hospital facilities that were dedicated to COVID treatment.
As Hospitals protect patients from COVID, it is also evident that the Hospitals themselves need better and proactive protection from the risks to reliability and safety of the facility.
Underlying electrical issues in Hospital fires
A Hospital’s critical nature demands extremely careful wiring. The presence of power quality issues, such as high harmonics in the electrical system, is often the root cause of overheating of cables and equipment, further leading to system failures, and in extreme cases, short circuits and instances of fire. This is further accentuated by poor workmanship or poor quality of electrical hardware being deployed under time and financial stress.
As Hospitals continually equip themselves to serve more patients, reliable electrical supply must be ensured for the seamless and safe functioning of the facility. The addition of new electrical loads, whether it is ventilators, or converting the basement to a makeshift healthcare facility, a thorough assessment to check the preparedness of the existing electrical system to function in a safe and reliable manner should always be the first priority. From minor voltage or current disturbances to the emergence of a previously undetected poor grounding issue, power quality issues can lead to a spike in risks to the facility that Hospitals may not be in a position to control swiftly.