Australia Weather News

The women's care unit at Lismore Base Hospital was damaged when severe storms hit the New South Wales North Coast on Sunday afternoon. - ABC

The Health Services Union is calling for an investigation into building standards at the Lismore Base Hospital on the NSW north coast after scaffolding collapsed onto the roof of the maternity ward during Sunday's storm.

The HSU's north coast organiser, Jonathan Milman, said it was a miracle no-one was injured when steel beams pierced the ceiling near where five mothers and five babies were resting.

The severe storms left more than 7,000 Essential Energy customers without power and displaced some patients at the hospital.

The State Emergency Service (SES) said it had received more than 155 calls for help, mostly for fallen trees and roof damage.

Mr Milman said it was the second incident on the site within 12 months.

"Last December a concrete truck tipped over on the building site and it very narrowly missed the base of a large crane, and also narrowly missed hitting the hospital," he said.

"There needs to be a full state and federal investigation and it needs to be open and transparent.

"Our members need to understand that they're going to be safe at work.

"It's a miracle no-one was injured, but why has this happened?"

The chief executive of Health Infrastructure New South Wales defended the safety standards at Lismore Base Hospital.

Sam Sangster said the building contractor's safety record was outstanding.

"John Holland's had 261,000 odd hours worked on that site without a lost-time injury which we're very proud of how they've gone about doing that," he said.

"They've had numerous hazard inspections and safe-work-method statement audits going on up there.

"We don't take them for their word, we have audits going on as well."

Woman and baby make lucky escape

Chris Crawfod, the chief executive of the Northern NSW Local Health District said the women and the babies who had been in the maternity ward spent the night in another part of the hospital.

"We had a storm cell that came right over Lismore Base Hospital that caused some of the new building work we were doing, particularly the scaffolding, to fall off the building works and fall onto our maternity unit," Mr Crawford said.

No-one was hurt, but Tracey Ryan, who was a patient in a room a few metres down from the maternity ward, said one woman and her baby, born six weeks premature, had a lucky escape.

"She'd rung her husband just a few minutes before and he said get off the phone and get away from the windows there's a massive storm coming, so she did that and she stepped out into the corridor and she had [been] ... right where the collapse of the ceiling was," she said.

Mr Crawford hopes patients will be able to return to the ward later this week.

"I've been focused on making sure that we get Health Infrastructure, who are running our building program, to come up and look at this work that has come unstuck," Mr Crawford said.

He said WorkCover would also inspect the site.

ABC