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, Unity Health Toronto, which oversees operations at the hospital, confirmed that heat and hot water have returned.

“We are happy to share that heat, hot water and steam are at full capacity. This means most services at St. Joseph’s Health Centre have returned to regular operations, including our Emergency Department,” Unity Health said in an updated statement over the weekend.

“Patients should attend their scheduled appointments. Thank you to our patients, staff and physicians and our surrounding community for their patience and understanding. Thank you to our teams and system partners who worked so hard to resolve this issue.”

All non-essential activities at the hospital were cancelled because of the boiler system issue.

Dialysis and chemotherapy patients were not impacted by the outage and were able top attend their appointments as scheduled, Unity Health Toronto previously said.

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

Visitors were 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.

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