Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Fire outbreak at hospital

— Photo: S. Mahinsha

Emergency: Fire and Rescue Services personnel in action as a fire broke out on the fifth floor of a city hospital on Sunday.

Thiruvananthapuram: Firefighters battled for more than an hour to control a blaze that broke out on the fifth floor of the Ananthapuri Hospital, near Chackai, on the National Highway bypass here on Sunday morning.

An operation theatre was gutted. Four firemen were injured but patients, bystanders and hospital staff escaped unhurt.

Doctors, paramedical staff and security personnel, assisted by bystanders, toiled hard to evacuate the patients to an adjoining area of the building. Confusion prevailed for hours as anxious bystanders thronged the waiting rooms and staircases.

After breaking open the glass cladding in the front of the building, the personnel of the Fire and Rescue Services trained their high-pressure hoses on the building from outside. They later fought their way through the thick cloud of acrid smoke to enter the fifth floor.

The sealed glass windows had to be broken to let out the smoke. While two firefighters were injured by glass shards, two others had to be treated for suffocation.

By the time the fire was brought under control, the entire floor was flooded with water. Hospital staff distributed face masks to the firemen entering the gutted room.

The adjacent post-operative ward wore a ravaged look, with machines beeping ceaselessly and half-finished meals by the bedsides. Doctors and paramedical staff, their clothes and masks blackened by soot, rushed from room to room. With the elevators shut down, several patients had to be hoisted up through the narrow staircase on stretchers.

As many as four fire tenders and 32 firemen from the Chackai and Chengalchoola stations were deployed to prevent the fire from getting out of control.

Fire and Rescue Services Divisional Officer Joe Kuruvilla Easow said the initial estimate of the damage was Rs.70 lakh.

He said the reason for the fire could not be immediately ascertained. The damaged equipment included a heart-lung machine, microscopes, computers, suction machines, operation table, anaesthesia machine, syringe pump and a fibre optic scope.

Hospital chairman A. Marthandan Pillai said the staff were the first to notice smoke coming out of an operation theatre on the fifth floor which also housed an outpatient section and a nursing college.

“We immediately activated the hospital’s fire-fighting mechanism and took steps to evacuate the patients on the next floors,” he said. Dr. Pillai said the incident would not affect the functioning of the hospital.

The incident highlighted the absence of proper equipment for the Fire and Rescue Services. Without a snorkel, the firefighters had to scale a rope ladder used by painters to climb up to the fifth floor and break open the glass cladding.

In the absence of gas masks, they had to use surgical face masks. Onlookers observed that, were it not for the sheer bravery and effort of the firemen, the blaze would have spun out of control and engulfed the whole floor.

Mr. Easow said the hospital would be issued notice to demolish a structure near the exit staircase that could impede escape. “Though the mandatory fire-fighting equipment was in place, the hospital staff were unprepared to tackle such a fire. None of the fire extinguishers in the building were used. Apparently, the staff were not equipped to handle such a situation,” he said.

However, Dr. Pillai said the staff had carried out initial damage control before the firefighters arrived. “Evacuation was our priority,” he added.

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