Staff scrambled to mop up as much as four inches of water after the sprinkler system in the lobby area at University Hospital of Northern B.C. mysteriously went off on Friday morning.
"All signs are pointing to a glitch in the sprinkler system, there's no evidence that it was any type of fire that set it off," said Northern Health spokesperson Eryn Collins said later the same morning.
The sprinklers and alarm system went off at about 7:30 a.m. and it took about 90 minutes soak up the water and bring the area back to normal.
"We had a fabulous response from staff in various parts of the hospital, including the lab that's located directly off the lobby," Collins said. "Laundry, housekeeping, admin, human resources staff and our plant and property folks all descended on the lobby and started mopping up."
Damages was limited to wet carpets, said Collins, who added the 16-foot tall, 500-pound carving created by Native artists Peter George and Clayton Gauthier, recently installed on the east wall remained untouched.
"It's a large area and the type of sprinklers in that area are called deluge sprinklers so it's not just a light sprinkle of water so at one point there was about four inches of water on the lobby floor," Collins said.
"There's no impact on services and other than some lingering cleanup, vacuuming, that sort of thing, you wouldn't really know it even had happened."
