CINCINNATI -- No one was injured and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center was not evacuated following an electrical fire Wednesday morning, Chief of Staff Dr. Derek Wheeler said.
Multiple emergency crews were at the scene of the fire before 4:30 a.m. Officials said it was a transformer fire that was contained to the eighth level of the hospital's main clinical building.
Wheeler said no patients were on the eighth floor, but some patients were moved internally for convenience.
Although the hospital was not evacuated, Wheeler emergency crews were poised to assist in moving patients.
“This is a very uncommon scenario -- one that we’ve trained for -- and we’ve had simulations around these kinds of events,” Wheeler said. “We’ve done some evacuation drills, so we’ve practiced for this, which I think came in handy today.
“We will be looking at all of our processes and reviewing our electrical systems very closely, and we’ll move forward and we’ll take the learnings from this particular incident and do better next time.”
By 6:30 a.m., the fire was out, the hospital tweeted. No patients were injured, but power was out until 8 a.m. as a result, according to Wheeler.
Update: Duke cut power to part of Children's Hospital, crews on the roof now. @WCPO pic.twitter.com/p8TfcUjZax
— Ally Kraemer (@AllyKraemer) January 4, 2017
In a Wednesday morning press conference, Wheeler said the fire caused surgery schedules to be pushed back, but the hospital would return to normal operations around noon Wednesday.
Watch the full press conference in the live player below.
Burnet Avenue was closed near the hospital for more than two hours Wednesday morning.
Cincinnati Police said just before 6 a.m. that a pedestrian was struck about a mile away near the intersection of Burnet Avenue and Reading Road.
WCPO will update this story as more information is available.
