Two Island Health employees were badly burned by a steam leak in the boiler room at Victoria General Hospital on Friday morning.
Fire crews from View Royal, Colwood, Langford and Esquimalt responded to alarm bell ringing at the hospital around 8:30 a.m.
They quickly discovered that one of the big steam lines in the boiler room in the hallway was ruptured, said View Royal Fire Chief Paul Hurst.
“A worker was working on a connection or a valve, and the pipe either ruptured or the valve ruptured, and the steam coming out the back door at the hospital was under pressure,” Hurst said. “This thing let loose while the guy was working on it.”
Fire crews entered the hallway to try to figure out what was going on, Hurst said. They found the maintenance worker with serious burns in the hallway. Langford firefighters took him to a shower to try to cool him down, then walked him to a waiting ambulance to transport him to the burn unit at Royal Jubilee Hospital.
It was a dangerous and frightening situation, Hurst said, with temperatures in the hallway hitting 130 C.
“Picture two or three inches of boiling water coming down the hallway. There was zero visibility,” he said. “It was a very hectic scene for the first 20 minutes. The steam pipe is pumping steam out but you can’t see the pipe and where the steam is coming from.”
View Royal and Colwood firefighters had to climb 10 feet into a ceiling space to shut off the valve.
Then the firefighters found a second man, not as badly burned, and sent him off in a second ambulance to Royal Jubilee.
The incident caused significant water damage on the first floor and hospital employees are doing their best getting the water out of the hallway, Hurst said.
“It’s all hands on deck,” he said. “It was a bit of a messy scene for a while.”
Three chiefs and 29 firefighters responded, he said.
Island Health spokesman Andrew Leyne said no patients were injured and patient care is not affected.
Ambulances were diverted from Victoria General to Royal Jubilee for about two hours this morning, he said, but the VGH emergency department remains open and able to provide emergency care.
Leyne said there was flooding in a non-patient care area, and plans are underway to remediate and repair.
WorkSafe B.C. and West Shore RCMP are conducting the investigation because it’s an industrial accident, he said.
Yesenia Dhott, a media relations officer for WorkSafe B.C., confirmed that the agency had been notified of a workplace incident at about 9:15 a.m.
“A WorkSafe B.C. prevention officer has been assigned to the incident. We do not have any other information to share at the moment,” Dhott said.
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