Woodhull Hospital will remain closed for at least “several days” as it continues to undergo repairs after evacuating 116 patients there to other city hospitals due to equipment damage caused by heavy rainfall on Friday.
NYC Health + Hospitals officials said an assessment of the hospital’s engineering and electrical systems had already begun, but repairs could take “several days before the hospital can resume operations.” A city councilmember from Brooklyn said that while repairs were ongoing, the hospital was making "good progress."
Councilmember Jennifer Gutiérrez, who represents District 34, covering Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood, said she’s been in close contact with leadership at the hospital. She said ConEd needed to shut the entire system down to complete their work, and officials would be checking each individual outlet before patients can return to the space.
“I just really believe that it was a tough decision,” she said. “I hope that once everything is kind of back to normal, we can kind of assess what we could have prevented here.”
Gutiérrez, who had given birth to her child at Woodhull, said the shutdown highlighted the importance of the facility in the community.
“A lot of us are deeply invested in ensuring that they have everything they need because they are that safety net. They are our public hospital,” Gutiérrez said. “They are the hospital where the influx of migrants — they're seeking care at Woodhull. No one can be turned away there. And when you shut that one resource down, it really has implications everywhere else in the neighborhood.”
Woodhull reported no adverse health effects to those who had to be moved.
