47.5 MB - The Whole Building Design Guide

Potable water service will likely be shut down during and immediatelyafter an event because of line breakages, lack of power to runpumping stations, or repair delays because of blocked roads andaccess routes. Hospitals, especially those in hurricane-prone regions,need a back-up water supply system in the form of:m Wells for exclusive hospital use should be supplied with theirown emergency generator to run the well pumps.m Water storage or water recycling systems on site should serve asa back-up to the central water supply.In many areas, the sewer system broke down shortly after thestorm arrived, either because of loss of power required to run municipalpumping stations, sewage back-up or shut down of sewagetreatment plants as a result of flooding, or because uprooted treesbroke the sewer lines. When the water and sanitary waste systemswere disabled, patients and staff were required to use hazardouswaste bags (red bags) taped to buckets or toilet bowls to managebodily waste. At West Jefferson Medical Center, used bags werestored in the hallways for several days and then buried on the hospitalsite for later disposal.Hospital design in hurricane-prone regions should also take intoconsideration the need to provide an onsite sewage-diversion andstorage system to prevent sewer backflows from disrupting hospitalsanitary system operations. Field observations indicate that in situationswhere the sanitary sewer system may be damaged, causing adisruption in service, functionality may be protected by:m Installation of an onsite septic tank as a sanitary back-upsystemm Installation of backflow devices in the sanitary lines to preventsewage from backing up into the hospitalm Designating, as part of the operations plan, a limited numberof sanitary systems to use in the hospital, so the onsite storagetank does not fill too quicklym Creating holding ponds for direct pumping of sewage, ifsufficient site area is availableOBSERVATIONS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF CRITICAL FACILITIES4-17