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Indians stunned as 94 die in hospital fire
New York Times - December 11, 2011
It had some of the latest radiation-therapy equipment in its cancer centre. It offered deluxe suites for its wealthiest patients. Its trauma surgery unit was said to be one of the best in eastern India, as well as its highly efficient emergency room.
But on Friday the hospital, known as AMRI, confronted an emergency for which it seemed to have no plan. An inferno in its basement transformed the entire hermetically sealed and airconditioned building into a giant chimney for a searing, smoky fire.
When the smoke cleared, 94 people were dead, scores more were injured and a nation was left asking: is nowhere, even an expensive, privately run hospital designed for the country's upwardly mobile classes, safe from the disaster that seems to lurk on every railway line, highway on-ramp and festival ground?
Omar Abdullah, Chief Minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, summed up the mood when he sent this message on Twitter: "Every time I see incidents like AMRI I'm convinced we really are a 3rd world nation with delusions of greatness."
There appeared to be many reasons why the fire in the 180-bed hospital roared out of control for many hours and produced such catastrophic results. Ineptitude, poor equipment and bad information helped to compound what initially seemed like a minor blaze.
The doctors on duty fled almost immediately, leaving patients stuck in wards at the mercy of the billowing black smoke, witnesses and patients said. People who tried to help rescue patients said they were turned away by security guards who assured them it was only a small kitchen fire. Hospital officials were slow to call the fire department, and then fire trucks were slow to arrive, hospital officials said.
In fact, it took firefighters more than 12 hours to subdue the blaze. The hospital's fire detection and suppression system did not function, fire department officials said.
Six senior hospital officials were charged with culpable homicide in connection with the fire. The blaze is sure to raise fresh questions about safety in India's booming private hospital business.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene of under-equipped firefighters struggling to rescue trapped patients.
The hospital was storing diesel and motor oil in the basement. Fuelled by these volatile elements, the fire sent plumes of searing, pitch-black smoke into the upper floors via lift ducts. Patients, many of them bedridden, had no way to escape. The mirrored glass windows did not open. The facade of the building was made of thick glass, which firefighters struggled to break. Finally, they used a ladder to reach an upper floor, where they were able to break the glass and vent some of the smoke. But by then the fire had been pouring smoke into the hospital for almost four hours.
Firefighter A. Banerjee said: "All the deaths took place because of suffocation. Nobody died because of fire."
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