By PAMELA WOOD Staff Writer
Rain poured down on Anne Arundel County during a summer storm last night, partially flooding the emergency room at Baltimore Washington Medical Center.
The Glen Burnie hospital also lost power for several hours and had to turn away ambulances.
Hospital spokesman Allison Eatough said workers, firefighters and even local businesses pulled together to keep the hospital running.
The power was knocked out at about 9 p.m., and emergency power immediately came on.
While no patients had to be transferred, the hospital had to stop accepting patients by ambulance. Walk-in patients still were treated.
In addition to the power problem, part of the emergency room was flooded, Mrs. Eatough said.
Hospital workers said water was coming through the ceiling “in waterfalls.”
Firefighters helped soak up the mess in the emergency room, which is one of the busiest in the state, treating 90,000 patients a year.
With the hospital on emergency power, some luxuries had to be cut off – there was no air conditioning and not all of the outside signs and lights were on.
The Pasadena Home Depot donated 40 fans to help the hospital cope, Mrs. Eatough said. Firefighters brought in outdoor lights.
“We were very, very grateful,” Mrs. Eatough said. “It shows that we’re a community hospital and the community pulled through for us.”
Full power was restored at about midnight and the emergency room resumed accepting patients by ambulance at about 4 a.m.
By this morning, everything was back to normal and there were few signs of last night’s ordeal – just a “wet floor” sign and a carpet dryer fan.
Anne Arundel Medical Center reported no problems because of the storm.
County police and firefighters also weren’t called to many storm- related problems, other than the flooding at BWMC.
“All things considered, we were relatively slow last night,” said Capt. Harry Steiner, a spokesman for the Fire Department. “A couple of trees and wires were down like we typically get, but it’s not as bad as we’ve seen even with smaller storms we’ve had (this summer).”
BGE reported having 623 Anne Arundel customers still without power at 10:20 a.m. And 9,402 customers who lost power the night before had their power restored.
The greatest concentrations of outages were in Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Harford County. All told, since Tuesday, BGE has brought 78,000 customers online who lost power in storms.
“We’ve been working on multiple storms over the last few days,” said Kelly Shanefelter, a BGE spokesman.
Yesterday’s storms dropped 2.42 inches of rain at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport in Linthicum, said Jared Klein, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
That was a record rain total for that date. The previous record of 1.75 inches was set in 1988.
Mr. Klein said there were reports of 3 inches of rain in spots in the Baltimore region.
The storms were slower moving than most summer storms, allowing more rainfall to pour down, Mr. Klein said.
The forecast for the next few days calls for slightly cooler temperatures than normal for this time of year.
Tomorrow should be mostly sunny with a high near 89. Saturday will be mostly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of rain and a high near 88. There’s a 30 percent chance of rain on Sunday, when the high should be near 89.
Staff writers Sean Patrick Norris and Heather Rawlyk contributed to this report. {Corrections:} {Status:}
BWMC LOST POWER, HAD TO STOP ACCEPTING PATIENTS BY AMBULANCE
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