[hur sandy] NYU Hospital Evacuated After Generator Failure

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From what I remember hearing: the primary(?) generator was underwater (flooded), then the fuel pump to a second generator failed (also flooded?).
 
I am just assuming NYC would legally require a backup system there.
Perhaps not?
701.12 mentions flooding. I am suprised they ever passed inspection if they were both in the basement.
 
jim dungar said:
From what I remember hearing: the primary(?) generator was underwater (flooded), then the fuel pump to a second generator failed (also flooded?).
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That's what I heard. First generator was in basement and was flooded. Second generator was on the roof but the pump that sent fuel to it was in the basement and got flooded as well. The rooftop unit started but ran out of fuel.
 
I guess we will learn from our mistakes not to have generators, fuel tanks, or other important equipment in the basement or on the first floor.
 
When I first heard it I was like, great, another generator tested without full load. The next morning I heard the same thing that the fuel pumps floaded for the one on the roof. I wonder if the unit was put on the roof just because of lack of space.


In my opinion the best place to have a genset is closest to its Emergency load. However I dont think fire codes would allow it in a mechanical room near the ICU. Fuel tanks too have huge restrictions.
 
mbrooke said:
Fuel tanks too have huge restrictions.
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That is likely the biggest contribution to the problem here.

Even if these generators would have been powered from utility supplied gas (like natural gas), there is no guarantee that gas service may not have been disrupted, by something that happens off site of the hospital. When you have water levels higher than ever recorded, you will have things like that happen. We had same thing happen here couple years ago along a local river. Many long time landmarks, roads, bridges, homes, businesses and recreation sites were destroyed. But only a few thousand people at the most were directly effected over a river maybe 150 miles long, not going to make the national news like similar thing happening in largest population city in the country, and not going to have the potential financial impact on as much of the country either. But was still disaster for those directly effected.
 
In NYC, emergency generators are not allowed to be gas, they must be fuel. Only optional standby generators are allowed to be gas.
 
ASG said:
In NYC, emergency generators are not allowed to be gas, they must be fuel. Only optional standby generators are allowed to be gas.
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wonder why that is given how reliable natural gas service has been shown to be.

i have never quite understood putting any critical equipment in a basement where there is some chance of it flooding. that happened with several hospitals in new orleans. and they knew their basements were below sea level and put things there anyway.
 
petersonra said:
wonder why that is given how reliable natural gas service has been shown to be.

i have never quite understood putting any critical equipment in a basement where there is some chance of it flooding. that happened with several hospitals in new orleans. and they knew their basements were below sea level and put things there anyway.
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Its harder to pump the fuel up if it's on the roof.
 
petersonra said:
wonder why that is given how reliable natural gas service has been shown to be.

i have never quite understood putting any critical equipment in a basement where there is some chance of it flooding. that happened with several hospitals in new orleans. and they knew their basements were below sea level and put things there anyway.
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When you have earth washing out because of flooding there is increased risk of damage to gas lines, but then again we have basements filling with water also.

Lots of codes that consider flooding are based on 100 year flood records, if you set a new record you are going to have damage to things that did consider the codes, but now you have a new record and new flood levels will apply to new construction.
 
jusme123 said:
...but its harder to run in a flooded basement.
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Obviously. Just its all a factor. Is it worth the additional cost to put a generator and all associated equipment, including pumps, on the roof so you are set in case it floods? How likely is it that you can have trouble with your fuel pipeline or your conduit going down to the main switchgear? How difficult does a generator on the roof make it if you ever want to make an expansion? It also might be more difficult structurally. What if there's an earthquake?
 
In my opinion the best type of back up system has both gas and diesel.

A while back ago I helped with the design and constroution of a testing laboratory with computer data storage that had both natural gas and diesel gen sets. The area had somewhat frequent powerloss during storms. The ATSs where in series with one another. During an outage the 2 gas gensets would start first and transfer. If there was a loss of gas then the diesel ATSs would time out and start the 2 diesel gensets. The diesel units were also load tested for 65 to 90 minutes under load by transfering the building power over to it once every 60 days. If full load could not be reached which was the usual a load bank would come on line. Each genset could run all of the critical load in the building. (all 4 gensets added up to 4x the needed backup) The diesel to was burned off before it became unusable. The back up was well thought out and kept. The critical loads and computers were on multiple UPC, that too had inspected battery banks.


Its not uncommon for non hospital facilitys like data centers to have better and more reliable back up power. Best example I can think of: Goldman Sachs was fully lit even though the street it was on was totally flooded while NYU lost power and Bellevue had to fight to stay running. :happyno:
 
Nature is and always will be more powerful than man.

Is man capable of creating mountain ranges, or lakes covering millions of acres, or continental river systems?

Man has made some mighty creations, nature has been able to destroy many of them in relatively short time.

Some get all upset about emissions we put into the atmosphere, my understanding was when Mt. St. Helens blew, it put more pollution into the air than the entire industrial revolution.

Man is the dominant species of this planet, but is still pretty powerless compared to nature.
 
Last time I was on a cruise liner, the emergency generator and fuel were on the top deck, on the assumption that if the ship sank that would be the last to go. Seemed like a good idea to me.
 
fmtjfw said:
Last time I was on a cruise liner, the emergency generator and fuel were on the top deck, on the assumption that if the ship sank that would be the last to go. Seemed like a good idea to me.
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Not so sure that the emergency generator is all that important to me when it comes down to the last thing to go.
 
A lot of diesel gensets can be run on natural gas as well as diesel.

Maybe it is time to start converting some of the old ones so they can run both ways.
 
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