Storm forces Good Samaritan hospital to run on generators, postpone surgeries 

Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in West Islip postponed about 40 surgeries Friday as a precaution after lightning knocked out its power the night before and forced it to use generators, a hospital official and PSEG Long Island said.

The hospital still performed emergency surgeries and is rescheduling other procedures for next week, said John McMurray, chief operating officer at Good Samaritan.

McMurray said because both electrical feeds went down, the hospital ran on generators for a time Thursday night.

“Air conditioning was not at full power, and that led to higher humidity,” he said. “For that reason, we are, as a precaution, in the process of sterilizing equipment” used for surgeries.

PSEG said restoring power to the hospital was its top priority as soon as Thursday night's storms subsided. “Multiple lightning strikes damaged PSEG Long Island equipment in the area, leading to the outage,” said spokesman Jeremy Walsh. He estimated hundreds of entities lost power. “Power was restored at 9:01 p.m. to the hospital,” he said.

McMurray said the hospital will operate at full capacity by Saturday evening.

Good Samaritan is part of the Catholic Health Services of Long Island system.