A large fire broke out on the roof of Lehigh Valley Hospital — Dickson City at about 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday and patients were evacuated.
Flames were seen coming out of the hospital’s roof. Roughly 100 first responders and dozens of emergecny vehicles were there assisstsing or ready to assist.
Patients of the medical facility in wheelchairs and stretchers, some walking with help of staff, were being moved to an adjacent buidling at 316 Main Ave. in Dickson City. Across Main Avenue at Citywide Animal Clinic parking lot was filled with 10 ambulances, with additional ones parked along Main Avenue.
An amulance was delayed as first responders tried to clear a lane that was choked with emergency vehciles, utility vehicles and buses.
There were four County of Lackawanna Transit System buses parked just short of the hospital, and an official could be overheard saying: “If you are family, go to the buses.”
Whether any Dickson City patients required transfer to Geisinger Community Medical Center or any other facility was not immediately clear.
A hospital staff member that answered the phone in the emergency department of Regional Hospital of Scranton about 10:45 p.m. said they didn’t know at that point if they’d have to take transferred patients from Dickson City.
“We are open to them, but we don’t know,” the staff member said. “We are ready for patients to come if they need to but we haven’t heard of anyone in particular coming yet.”
At least three utiltiy crew vehicles were at the scene and one worker was in a bucket truck working on a line in front of the hospital.
Multiple fire, police and EMS crews, including Moscow, Justus, Chinchilla, and Greater Pittston, rushed to the scene. Off-shift employees are arriving at the scene to assist, according to scanner reports.
The for-profit, physician-owned Coordinated Health broke ground at the Dickson City site in January 2019, after acquiring Scranton Orthopaedic Specialists in 2017. But work on what would have been called Coordinated Health Scranton Hospital soon stalled, and didn’t resume in earnest until after nonprofit Lehigh Valley Health Network acquired Coordinated in December 2019.
Officials gathered at the site to announce plans for an expanded hospital in October 2020, after construction had resumed.
The acquisition and the hospital project marked Lehigh Valley Health Network’s first major foray into Lackawanna County and the Scranton-area. The new Dickson City hospital also filled a void in the Midvalley region left when Mid Valley Hospital, a Commonwealth Health facility in Blakely, eliminated inpatient services and its emergency room in 2014.
The new hospital ultimately opened in May 2022 with a 19-bay emergency room. It celebrated in June 2023 the addition of seven ICU beds and nine new medical-surgical beds on a previously unfinished fourth floor of the then roughly year-old facility.
Lehigh Valley Health Network and Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health completed a merger in 2024, closing the transaction that summer to become a single health system.
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