Grace Hospital was shut down for several hours this morning after an electrical fire affected all incoming power to the hospital.

Patients were forced to wait for scheduled medical procedures as Tauranga Fire Brigade dealt with the fire.

File photo.

Tauranga senior station officer Mark Keller says the electrical fire was on a component on the main bus – all the incoming power to the hospital was affected, says Tauranga senior station officer Mark Keller.

Mark says they had to shut off the main and the hospital's emergency generator as well.

'The serious effect was on the operation of the hospital. The actual putting out the fire was pretty simple.

'In this case we used the dry powder and left the power on so that we could ascertain for ourselves that there was nobody relying on the power like patients in hospital.” Mark says there were no operations being carried out, there was nobody needing power.

'At that stage before we could do anything about shutting the power off it was more controlling the fire, making sure everybody in the building was safe, all the patients were safe.

'Normally we would shut the power off then put the fire out, this case it was controlling the fire and then shutting off the power, once we had the okay that all the patients were safe and there were no operations going on.”

Repeated attempts by SunLive to contact Grace Hospital manager Janet Keys have been unsuccessful today.

Power was restored to the hospital in the morning with surgery patients having to wait for only an extra two or three hours.