Mark Lennihan/Associated Press Bellevue Hospital Center being evacuated on Oct. 31.Ninety-nine days after it was evacuated in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Bellevue Hospital Center fully reopened on Thursday.
Bellevue, New York City’s flagship public hospital, had been reopening piecemeal, but it has now resumed its status as a Level 1 trauma center and opened all 828 inpatient beds. Bellevue was evacuated for the first time in its history Oct. 31, two days after the storm first hit the city. The hospital’s basement flooded wit millions of gallons of water and fuel pumps for its backup power generators failed. Three hundred patients were evacuated in the darkness that night.
Part of the work of getting the hospital back on line involved moving major equipment like electrical switching gear from the basement up to the first floor.
“It has been a labor of almost unimaginable scope, but Bellevue is back,†said Alan D. Aviles, president of the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation.
Another city hospital that was forced to evacuate by the storm, Coney Island Hospital, is also making progress. Its Tower Building has reopened along with most of its inpatient beds, and the hospital is admitting walk-in patients from its emergency department and patients from other city facilities, the city said.
