Slow rescue response blamed and angry relatives claim staff left patients with injuriues trapped in burning building
Relatives of patients who died as a blaze swept through a nursing home in Kolkata on Friday described how their loved ones called them as flames rose through the seven-story complex.
More than 70 people were killed in the fire and officials at the scene said that staff had abandoned their often immobilised patients as the fire spread.
Crowds of angry and grief-stricken relatives gathered outside the Amri hospital as fire tenders continued to douse the smoking remains of the private clinic in the city's Dhakuria neighbourhood. Clashes with police were reported.
Rescue services struggled to reach the roof of the hospital and its top floor. It is feared the death toll will rise. Around 160 patients were in the hospital, officials said.
One man described how his 37-year old wife, immobilised with a leg injury, had called at around 3.30 am to say that thick smoke was filling the room where she lay.
"She was gasping badly. I asked her to cry for help. She said there were no staff around. I overheard many patients crying for help. She called me to come and help her out of the hospital. Then the line was disconnected. I called her many times afterward. But the calls went unanswered," the man told a local TV channel.
According to local reports, the fire broke out around 1am but fire services only arrived three hours later. Witnesses said that it was young men from local slums who first launched a rescue effort.
Patients and relatives claimed that hospital staff did little to help and claimed that smoke detectors failed to go off.
Sudipta Nundy, a local resident, said his brother-in-law Amitabha Das was being treated for an infection at the hospital. He died by the time rescuers arrived at his smoke-filled ward.
"He would have survived had hospital authorities allowed outsiders in early to evacuate the patients," he told Associated Press. Three staff were killed in the fire.
"It was horrifying that the hospital authorities did not make any effort to rescue trapped patients," said Subrata Mukherjee, West Bengal's state minister for public health engineering. "Senior hospital authorities ran away after the fire broke out."
The vice-president of Amri, Satyabrata Upadhyay, denied that safety procedures had not been followed and said the hospital would offer 200,000 rupees (£2,450) as compensation for families of the dead. The Indian government has also offered compensation.
The cause of the fire was still unknown last night and a police inquiry is now under way, officials said. It appears likely that the blaze originated in the basement of the hospital which had been designed as a carpark but was being used as a storage area. The owners have presented themselves to city authorities.
Such events are not rare in India where inspectors regularly take bribes to overlook breaches of health and safety or building regulations. Emergency services are rudimentary at best with ambulances rare and poorly equipped.
More than 40 people died in a blaze in an office block in Kolkata last year. There have been around a dozen other similar incidents in the city, the capital of the huge and poverty-stricken state of West Bengal. Most have been blamed on poor wiring. With few fire escapes or extinguishers, casualties are often high.
West Bengal is currently governed by Mamata Banerjee, a maverick politician who came to power earlier this year ending 30 years of Communist party rule. Banerjee described the blaze as an "unforgivable crime".
--
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/09/kolkata-hospital-fire-dead
~
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com
Belum ada komentar untuk "Kolkata hospital fire leaves scores dead"
Posting Komentar