Water emergency ends at Memorial
Submitted
Fri, Dec 22nd 2017 04:45 pm
Thanks to the efforts and creativity of the Memorial Medical Center facilities management team and Niagara Falls contractor J.R. Swanson Plumbing, full water pressure has now been restored to Memorial's downtown Niagara Falls campus.
A water main break early Saturday morning on 47th Street at Niagara Falls Boulevard resulted in a drastic drop in the water pressure being supplied to Memorial. Normal pressure coming into the campus is 45-50 pounds per square inch (psi) depending on the time of day. That dropped to 30 psi - up to a 40 percent decrease - and has remained at that low level all week.
"When notified of the water main break, we immediately implemented our water shortage emergency plan. Our entire staff responded to the challenge in true Memorial fashion: putting forth extra effort on all fronts to ensure that we didn't miss a beat when it came to providing care to hospital patients and the residents of our Schoellkopf Health Center," said President and CEO Joseph A. Ruffolo.
"When it became evident that the broken water main would not be repaired anytime soon, we brought in Swanson Plumbing and challenged them to join us in finding creative ways to restore our inside water pressure under these challenging conditions," Ruffolo added. "The temporary solutions they implemented are innovative and effective, and the safeguards they will leave in place after the broken main is repaired will help us prevent problems during future water emergencies."
