Air conditioner malfunction trips smoke alarm in hospital operating room

Riverhead firefighters responded to an alarm at Peconic Bay Medical Center this morning, when a smoke detector in an operating room activated.

The smoke detector went off after the motor on a rooftop air-conditioning unit burnt out, Riverhead Fire Chief Kevin Brooks said. It seems that the the air intake on a second, adjacent rooftop unit fed air into the surgical pavilion that “smelled pretty bad,” Brooks said. That tripped a smoke detector in OR-5, he said.

Firefighters equipped with thermal imaging cameras suited up in sterile clothing and thoroughly checked the operating rooms and hallways of the pavilion, the chief said.

An earlier, brief power outage kicked on the hospital’s 500kw generator that feeds the surgical pavilion, PBMC president and CEO Andrew Mitchell said.

It didn’t last long enough for the hospital facilities to transfer to the generator, Brooks said. Once power is restored by the utility, the generator shuts down. Brooks said he did not know whether the outage was related to what happened to the air-conditioning unit. The Riverhead fire marshal is investigating, Brooks said.

Mitchell called the smoke detector in the operating room “finicky.”

Everything checked out, he said. “There were no patient or facility issues,” Mitchell said.

Brooks said about 50 firefighters responded to the alarm with a ladder truck and other apparatus, which came in at around 10 a.m.