Fire in substation disrupts power to Akron City Hospital

A fire Thursday night in a substation in one of the parking lots at Summa’s Akron City Hospital knocked out power and left three people stranded in elevators.

Mike Bernstein, Summa’s public relations director, said the fire was reported around 7:30 p.m.

When the power was disrupted, Bernstein said, the hospital’s emergency generators kicked in restoring electricity to the hospital.

“There was no impact on our patients,” he said.

Akron fire crews were called to the scene to assist Ohio Edison workers in extinguishing the fire that sent a large column of black smoke over the city’s skyline.

Firefighters were able to quickly extinguish the blaze.

Fire crews had to rescue three people who became stuck in elevators that stopped working after the short power outage. Four of the hospital’s elevators were knocked out of commission.

Bernstein said no one was injured in the mishap, and as a precaution the hospital diverted incoming patients to other hospitals while crews worked through the evening to make repairs to the electrical substation.

A cause of the fire and subsequent outage was not disclosed.

It was a busy day for Akron firefighters, who responded to three other fires in the city.

Around 9 p.m. firefighters extinguished a fire in a bedroom in the 400 block of Dayton Street. No damage estimate was provided for that fire.

A fire in the 800 block of Sumner Street around 7:30 p.m. did an estimated $12,000 damage to a vacant house.

And firefighters responded to a fire in a vacant house in the 700 block of Griffton Avenue around 1:30 p.m. The home was a total loss.

No injuries were reported in the house fires.