Heat, hot water back running at St. Joseph’s hospital following boiler system failure

Heat and hot water are back running at St. Joseph’s Health Centre after a boiler system failure left the west-end Toronto hospital in the cold for most of Friday amid frigid temperatures.

In a statement Friday afternoon, Unity Health Toronto, which oversees operations at the hospital, confirmed that heat and hot water have returned but the boiler system issue has not been resolved.

The hospital network said it expects the boiler system to be fully back to normal by the end of the weekend and the work to bring it online will be a staged process

“We continue to actively monitor the temperatures and the safety and wellbeing of our patients, who are our top priority,” Unity Health said.

“Out of an abundance of caution,” the hospital network continues to ask the public to only come to its emergency department if they are facing a life-threatening situation.

“Otherwise, please seek urgent care at an alternative hospital, or contact your healthcare provider for guidance,” Unity Health added.

All non-essential activities at the hospital have been cancelled because of the boiler system issue. Unity Health said patients with affected appointments will be contacted directly by their care team to reschedule.

Dialysis and chemotherapy patients are not impacted by the outage and should attend their appointments as scheduled, Unity Health Toronto added.

CP24 spoke with one hospital employee who said the emergency department is quite cold, but patients in that area are being offered thick blankets to keep warm.

Visitors are still allowed to attend the hospital during the outage. Some who spoke with CP24 said their loved ones are being kept warm by hospital-provided space heaters.

Unity Health said while visitors can bring extra clothing or blankets to the patient they are visiting, space heaters and electric blankets are not permitted for safety reasons. The hospital network went on to say that donations from the public of that sort are appreciated, but they are unable to accept them.

It’s unclear when exactly the boiler went down and what caused the issue.