A common-variety snake slithered into a power switch box Tuesday at Vassar Brothers Medical Center, disrupting the electrical components and causing a 10-hour power disconnection at the City of Poughkeepsie hospital, a Vassar Brothers spokeswoman said.
Between 3 p.m. Tuesday and 1 a.m. Wednesday, backup generators supplied power to the hospital, ensuring there were no patient care disruptions, said Barbara Kram, corporate marketing director for Vassar Brother’s parent company, Health Quest.
The power box the snake got into is outside, about 150 feet from the main building. Workers found the dead snake in the power box.
Vassar Brothers did have to make some adjustments, including diverting new emergency room cases to other hospitals and serving cold food to patients while Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. worked to fix the problem, Kram said.
Central Hudson worked with the hospital’s electrician to activate an alternate power feed that will be used until the damaged primary feed can be fixed, utility spokesman John Maserjian said. He added he had not heard of other episodes of snakes causing short circuits, but had known of the potential for squirrels and birds to provoke outages.
Vassar Brothers emergency room did take in a few dire cases, and was “able to handle them,” Kram said.
Some elective patient procedures were rescheduled, but the operating rooms were running.
“We prepare for the unavoidable events such as this,” Kram said. “I’m proud to say there were no incidents. Patient safety and comfort were not compromised. On a bright note, we did give away all our ice cream.”
