DANVILLE — It was a little warm at Provena United Samaritans Medical Center Friday evening and early Saturday due to an interruption in power at the hospital.

“We did lose power about 3:30 p.m. Friday. The back-up generators came on right away. All patient care activities were still going,” said hospital spokeswoman Gretchen Wesner. “But we didn’t actually get regular power restored until around 4 a.m. Saturday.”

Wesner said hospital employees determined that a high-voltage fuse in a hospital transformer blew. It took a little while for them to realize it was a problem just at the hospital at 812 N. Logan Ave., Danville, and not part a more widespread outage.

That meant that non-essential areas of the hospital were without lights and the air conditioning didn’t work.

“In my office at 3:30 the lights went out but I still had my computer,” she said.  

“The big issue was the air conditioning. We did not have air until about 1 a.m. Saturday. We had 50 to 60 fans brought in, which helped cool things down. As far as patient care, the worst thing was just that it was warm,” she said.

Wesner said hospital officials were grateful to representatives of Anderson Electric, who worked into the early morning hours Saturday.

“They had a big crew of about 10 guys working on the problem. We were able to get everything re-established and working early in the morning. They had high-voltage specialists come out and test the transformer to make sure it would work okay. They didn’t find any other problem,” she said.

Wesner estimated there were fewer than 100 patients at the hospital, which has beds for 174.