Large hospital without electricity after thunderstorms | GP

Thousands of families in Västerbotten were without electricity due to severe thunderstorms at night. The University Hospital in Umeå was also damaged. First, the normal current was gone, then the backup power also did not start, due to the thunderstorm.

– To protect technology in the event of various kinds of power outages, the standby power cannot be started, then there will be a real short circuit. That’s why we have another reserve, the battery bank, says Bjorn Sandstrom, the hospital administrator, on standby.

Life-sustaining machines, sensitive IT systems, and other vital equipment have one last solution: battery reserves. Those that should start on Sunday mornings were between seven and eight in the morning.

The heavy thunderstorm that engulfed large parts of Västerbotten occupied the rescue service most of the night. A fire broke out in a villa after a lightning strike, several properties were damaged by water and a massive power outage affected several thousand families. Västerbottenskuriren.

Heavy rain in several places

Heavy rain swept several parts of the country on Saturday afternoon and Sunday night. At several SMHI measuring stations, precipitation amounts between 40 and 50 mm were measured between Saturday morning and Sunday morning.

One of the affected places is Hällefors outside Örebro, Nerikes Allehanda reports. One of the roads was swept away, the railway track was closed, many fires were extinguished after lightning, and many cellars were flooded. The amount of water is said to have decreased during the night, but it is still difficult to navigate by car and trains.

Other areas affected by the torrential rains are North Värmland and South Dalarna, where rainfall has been measured at more than 40 mm.

SMHI warns in Norrbotten

SMHI also warned on Sunday of rising water flows in the upper parts of the Lule River in Norrbotten, at the height of Lake Langas. The water level is expected to average out between every five years and every twenty-five years. Expected water levels may cause flooding problems.

He writes that the reason for the high water levels in the Luli River is the filling from the reservoirs upstream SMHI.