Maintenance and engineering managers pride themselves on anticipating and preparing for a range of scenarios and emergencies that can affect their facilities, from wildfires and flooding to power outages and hurricanes. Few, if any, emergency preparedness plans account for a moose.
A young moose trudging through the snow looking for a meal spotted green plants in the lobby of a medical building in the Providence Alaska Health Park and decided to drop in for a dose of greenery, according to AP.
The moose triggered the sensors on the automatic doors to the building that houses the hospital’s cancer center and other medical offices, says Randy Hughes, the hospital’s director of security. Hughes believes it’s the same moose that has been hanging around campus. Even though moose are common in Alaska, they made an announcement over the intercom of the moose’s presence out of safety concerns.
Security officers formed a semicircle to corral the moose and shoo it out the door. One officer even grabbed a piece of the plant the moose had been eating and tried to lure it out. The moose vacated the building but hung around in the building’s semicircular drive for a bit before heading to the other side of the building to bed down for an afternoon.
This wasn’t the first time a moose went inside one of the hospital complex’s buildings, and bears have tried to get into the emergency room before. A moose also wandered into an Alaska clinic in 2019.
Dan Hounsell is senior editor of the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
