A fire at Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, tragically claimed the lives of 11 newborns. The tragedy brings to fore the overall negligence towards public safety and disaster prevention.
About 180 patients including several newborns were choked to death in 13 massive fire incidents across hospitals in the country between 2011 and 2024.
About 94 people including 90 patients were smothered to death at one of the devastating fire tragedies at the AMRI Hospital in South Kolkata on December 12, 2011. The cause of the fire was the inflammable material, stored illegally in an underground car park of one of the wards, which caught fire and spread to the upper floors through air conditioner ducts.
The inferno at SMU Hospital in Bhubaneshwar on October 20, 2016, killed 20 people and left 120 with burn wounds. Eight persons died and over 145 sustained injuries when a massive fire -- which took more than three hours for the firefighters to douse -- swept through the state-run Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) Kamgar Hospital at Marol in Andheri, East Mumbai on December 17, 2018.
A stampede following a fire incident at Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital in Murshidabad district of West Bengal on March 3, 2019, killed one and left 30 injured. Another fire incident in an Ahmedabad hospital on August 6, 2020, claimed eight lives. Around 40 patients at the facility were rescued and shifted to a civic hospital.
Eleven patients, including two women died and several were feared trapped when a fire broke out at a hotel converted into Covid-19 care unit in Vijayawada on August 9, 2020. A fire incident on September 10, 2020, in the ICU of a 50-bedded Ahmedabad hospital treating Covid-19 patients snuffed lives out of eight patients while the remaining were evacuated and shifted to the civil hospital.
On the heels of it, another fire tragedy in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital in Rajkot claimed four Covid-19 patients and left six injured. The fire was caused by an electric short circuit at Uday Shivanand Hospital, a designated COVID-19 hospital, in the Mavdi area.
A midnight fire in the children's ward at a hospital in Bhandara of Maharashtra on January 9, 2021, charred 10 out of the 17 admitted newborns. Three of a family were killed and two others injured after a fire broke out in a building of a private hospital in Uttar Pradesh’s Agra on October 10, 2022.
The repeated fire incidents in our hospitals has exposed most poignantly the poor conditions of the Indian hospitals in terms of fire safety. No lessons seem to have been learnt because the frequency with which accidental fires keep breaking out in hospitals has not reduced. These incidents only show the extent of our callous approach towards public safety.
Fire can be especially dangerous when it occurs in hospitals because many patients in any typical hospital are not physically fit enough to quickly respond to emergency measures, especially evacuation calls.
Several research studies done on hospital fire safety reveals that several building safety codes, acts and guidelines are available, not only to prevent accidental fires but also to minimize harm when such fires do take place. However, observance of the stipulations is very lax, and seems to be exercised more in breach than in compliance.
The studies also reveal that hospitals have zones like the intensive care units which are not only more prone to accidents than other zones but can also cause greater loss of lives due to the presence of critically ill patients, or persons who are extremely vulnerable (for instance newborn babies).
Short circuits have been found to be the major cause of the fire accidents. Flammable chemicals were the next biggest trigger. Many of the hospitals are not compliant with safety requirements.
In a large number of hospitals and public buildings, it has been found that either the fire hydrants or extinguishers are absent, or even if they are present, but are non-functional. Worse, the staff don’t know how to use the fire extinguishers and are not aware of the basic fire drills.
The panic-stricken staff and patients cause commotion and this adds fuel to the crisis. The malfunctioning and non-functional smoke detectors and alarms contributed to the slowness of the emergency response only compound the problem.
There are hardly any fire audits done to check the fire safety status of the buildings. The recommendations given by the Fire department are generally not followed and in many cases facilities like hospitals and other commercial and residential structures operate without a valid occupation certificate.
Fire hazard is a serious threat which is ignored and eventually we land up paying a heavy price for our lax approach.