89 die in India hospital blaze after medical staff run away
Source: Agencies |
December 10, 2011, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
FLEEING medical staff abandoned patients to a raging fire that killed at least 89 people yesterday as flames poured through a seven-story hospital in eastern India.
Police arrested six hospital officials on charges of culpable homicide in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta. Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of the state of West Bengal, ordered the hospital's license withdrawn. The hospital denied any violations of safety measures. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
"It was horrifying that the hospital authorities did not make any effort to rescue trapped patients," said Subrata Mukherjee, West Bengal state minister for public health. "Senior hospital authorities ran away after the fire broke out."
As the fire spread from the hospital's basement, rescue workers on long ladders smashed windows in the upper floors of the AMRI Hospital to pull surviving patients out before they suffocated from smoke inhalation, while sobbing relatives waited on the street below. Rescue workers took patients on stretchers and in wheelchairs to a nearby hospital.
Moon Moon Chakraborty, who was in the hospital with a broken ankle, called her husband at home to tell him a fire had broken out.
"She had died by the time I reached the hospital," her husband said.
One survivor told Indian television she was sitting by the bedside of her mother, who was on a ventilator, when smoke came into the room.
Some patients rescued
"My mother was continuously telling me that she was feeling suffocated and uneasy," she said. "I kept ringing the bell for the nurse, but no one came."
Rescue workers managed to evacuate her mother more than two hours after the fire started, she said.
Emergency workers pulled 73 bodies from the building, and another 16 died later, police said.
Hospital officials said four bodies pulled from the building were staff members. The remainder were presumably patients and relatives who were aiding in their care. Rescue officials said many of the dead suffered from smoke inhalation.
At the time of the blaze, there were 160 patients in the facility, said Satyabrata Upadhyay, a senior vice president of the AMRI hospital company.
The loss of life was "extremely unfortunate and painful," but the facility followed strict fire-safety measures, he said.
The expensive AMRI private hospital was recently rated one of the best hospitals in the city by an Indian magazine. But safety regulations are routinely ignored at hospitals throughout India, where it is not uncommon for fire extinguishers, if they are present at all, to be several years old and never serviced. Few buildings have fire stairs, and fire drills are virtually unheard of.
Police arrested six hospital officials on charges of culpable homicide in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta. Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of the state of West Bengal, ordered the hospital's license withdrawn. The hospital denied any violations of safety measures. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
"It was horrifying that the hospital authorities did not make any effort to rescue trapped patients," said Subrata Mukherjee, West Bengal state minister for public health. "Senior hospital authorities ran away after the fire broke out."
As the fire spread from the hospital's basement, rescue workers on long ladders smashed windows in the upper floors of the AMRI Hospital to pull surviving patients out before they suffocated from smoke inhalation, while sobbing relatives waited on the street below. Rescue workers took patients on stretchers and in wheelchairs to a nearby hospital.
Moon Moon Chakraborty, who was in the hospital with a broken ankle, called her husband at home to tell him a fire had broken out.
"She had died by the time I reached the hospital," her husband said.
One survivor told Indian television she was sitting by the bedside of her mother, who was on a ventilator, when smoke came into the room.
Some patients rescued
"My mother was continuously telling me that she was feeling suffocated and uneasy," she said. "I kept ringing the bell for the nurse, but no one came."
Rescue workers managed to evacuate her mother more than two hours after the fire started, she said.
Emergency workers pulled 73 bodies from the building, and another 16 died later, police said.
Hospital officials said four bodies pulled from the building were staff members. The remainder were presumably patients and relatives who were aiding in their care. Rescue officials said many of the dead suffered from smoke inhalation.
At the time of the blaze, there were 160 patients in the facility, said Satyabrata Upadhyay, a senior vice president of the AMRI hospital company.
The loss of life was "extremely unfortunate and painful," but the facility followed strict fire-safety measures, he said.
The expensive AMRI private hospital was recently rated one of the best hospitals in the city by an Indian magazine. But safety regulations are routinely ignored at hospitals throughout India, where it is not uncommon for fire extinguishers, if they are present at all, to be several years old and never serviced. Few buildings have fire stairs, and fire drills are virtually unheard of.
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