No patient care was disrupted Thursday when Portland firefighters responded to a fire at the Maine Medical Center utility plant.

Division Chief Mike Thompson said the department responded to a call at 10:54 a.m. to 35 Gilman St. That building is part of the Maine Medical Center property and next to the parking garage and hospital building.

Hospital spokeswoman Caroline Cornish said that building is the central utility plant and houses mechanical equipment.

The fire department discovered that the turbo exhaust in a generator on the roof had malfunctioned and created a significant amount of heat. The rubber blocking and the wooden base for the generator caught fire, but the firefighters were eventually able to access that area and extinguish the flames.

Cornish said the hospital is evaluating what repairs will be needed, and redundancies in the systems at the hospital meant that the utilities and other operations were never interrupted.

“No patients or patient care were ever affected,” Cornish said.