The accident and emergency department of the Royal Berkshire Hospital has started to accept patients tonight after a major incident was declared and led to its closure following flooding and a fire.

The hospital took the extraordinary measure of closing its doors to anyone other than the critically ill and evacuated 89 patients from wards dedicated to looking after the elderly and those with heart conditions.

Patients were moved to cubicles in the A&E area as part of the evacuation or family members were asked to collect them and take them home.

The British Red Cross were on site from Friday morning, handing out food and drink to patients and staff at the Royal Berkshire Hospital.

Staff were working overtime and wearing miners lamps to see to treat patients in the wards left darkened by the electrical outage.

Mary Sherry, Operations Director at the Craven Road hospital, said tonight that more generators were being brought into the hospital over the weekend. 

She also asked people to consider whether they needed to go to the hospital as it was still under "extreme pressure".

She said: "From 9pm this evening we started to gradually reopen our A&E to receiving ambulances. The hospital still remains on internal incident alert and is still under extreme pressure. We would ask for the public to consider and only attend our A&E if critically ill.

“We have completed all necessary patient moves within the hospital due to yesterday's power outage, resulting in 89 patients safely moved from Battle Block. We are working to restore power with additional temporary generators at some point over the weekend.

"I would like to extend a very big thank you to all staff within the hospital and also to those who have assisted from South Central Ambulance Services and neighbouring hospitals.”

 

 

At 4.30 am yesterday (July 30), the basement was flooded after an underground leak and firefighters spent four hours pumping water away from the hospital.

A small electrical fire then broke out in the afternoon in an electrical cupboard. The combination of the two events had lead to emergency generators being brought in but no guarantee of when power would be restored permanently.

Tyler Clapham, who works as a kitchen assistant at an Italian restaurant arrived at the emergency department with a hand injury this afternoon.

The 22-year-old said: "I burnt my hand I just wanted to get it looked at. It is closed but what can you do? I have go to go to Broad Street so it is not a problem but I would hate to be in an emergency situation where you slice your hand or something and get sent six or seven miles away."

Charlie Harrison, a politics student at the University of Reading sliced his hand open whilst he was cooking.

The 22-year-old said: "I am a student here I was cooking in the kitchen and I sliced my hand with a knife. My friend has work in an hour a half so if he has to drive me all the way over there then that is going to be an inconvenince."

On an average day the deparment sees around 300 people.

Mary Sherry said earlier in the day: “The hospital is currently in major incident status due to the uncertainty of when full power will be restored to Battle Block and North Block. To ensure patient safety, we will be moving patients from Battle Block to other areas of the hospital.

“Our A&E is formally “closed” to anything other than life-threatening conditions. Members of the public are asked to either attend an urgent care centre, a walk in centre or A&E at Wexham Park, Stoke Mandeville, Frimley or Basingstoke with whom we have arranged a formal divert.”

"Our staff have been working hard through the night to ensure areas impacted by yesterday's power outage and isolated fire are back to normal.

“All water has been restored across the hospital. We now have the majority of power back on in North Block; however, we continue to have power issues on the north side of Battle Block, due to the extent of water damage. Our engineers on site are doing all that they can to ensure full power is restored as quickly and as safely as possible."