Surgeries Halted After Fire Causes Outage at VA Hospital

Correction: The headline incorrectly stated that a massive generator caught fire, when in fact it was several pieces of large, high-voltage equipment that were set aflame.

The Veterans Administration hospital in West Los Angeles was forced to run off of backup generators Sunday afternoon after an electrical fire broke out in an adjacent building causing an outage, VA spokesperson Wileen Hernandez told Patch. 

Though the hospital was running off of VA campus facility generators on Monday, all surgeries, elective procedures, and diagnostic appointments at the hospital were canceled through Tuesday and could be postponed as far out as Aug. 20 while Southern California Edison works to install a redundant backup generator, according to the VA. 

The engineers are also "evaluating the structure for soundness ... which is part of the restoration," SCE spokesperson Paul Klein said.

The cause of the fire, which destroyed all of the large pieces of high-voltage equipment in the building, is still under investigation. The cost associated with the damage has not yet been assessed, said Klein.

Fifty-five Los Angeles firefighters were on the scene shortly after receiving the call at 1:37 p.m. and successfully put out the fire without injury, said LAFD spokesperson Erik Scott.

—City News Service contributed to this report.