NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A power outage caused some problems at Vanderbilt Hospital, Vanderbilt Children's Hospital and the university Thursday morning.

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The outage started at about 7 a.m., which caused a total power loss at the entire Vanderbilt University for 2 1/2 hours.

There was never a loss of utility power to any of Vandy's hospitals, but a split second switch from one power source to another tripped Vanderbilt's steam power plant and shut it down.

Because there was no steam, it meant there was no heat and hot water to easily sterilize surgical tools.

"We don't just rely on steam sterilization. We also have other modes of sterilization. We also have off site sterilization centers," said Kathy Wilkerson, Infection Control Practitioner.

Power was back to normal Thursday afternoon, but 11 surgeries were either canceled or postponed because of the problem.

Initially officials thought that a power loss at the Sharondale substation caused the outage. However, representatives from Nashville Electric Service said the power failure occurred within Vanderbilt's power substation.

Sharondale is one of the city's largest distributors of power and many more people would have been affected if there was an outage at that location.

About a month ago, Vanderbilt also lost steam power when a gas line on White Bridge Road was damaged by workers. That problem lasted eight hours, but Thursday's issue was resolved in six hours.

Watch Channel 4 News at 5 p.m. for more details on this story.