Three days later, another fire at Kozhikode medical college hospital

Kozhikode: A fire broke out inside an operation theatre on the sixth floor of Kozhikode Medical College's super specialty emergency block at 2:15pm on Monday, just three days after a UPS battery explosion caused a fire in the same building. This forced authorities to move patients from the third and fourth floors, many of whom had only just returned after the earlier incident.
The incident has sparked allegations of safety lapses and violations of hospital protocols for readmitting patients before completing safety checks after Friday's fire. At present, the electrical inspectorate department is inspecting the building.
Monday afternoon's fire originated from operation theatre-15 which has not been commissioned. Sources said a short circuit in the pendant in the operation theatre may have triggered the fire while checks were being conducted. Though the staff managed to douse the flames using fire extinguishers, smoke billowed out immediately, following which Vellimadukunnu fire station personnel arrived and brought the situation under control.
On Friday, a battery in the UPS room of the emergency department on the ground floor had exploded, filling the building with smoke and forcing evacuation of almost 200 patients. Medical college authorities had started readmitting patients to the third and fourth floors of the block on Monday. Medical college principal K G Sajeeth Kumar said they started readmitting patients to the two floors after receiving approval from the electrical engineers who had checked these floors.
Though Kumar said there was no fire in the OT room, fire and rescue services personnel said there was a fire and it damaged equipment and bed. The official said that the sprinkler in the room had been activated.
Kumar said that less than 25 patients were moved back to wards in the super speciality block as other blocks were overcrowded with patients, some of them lying on the floor. On hearing the fire alarm, patients on the third and fourth floors panicked and they were evacuated to other wards through the skywalk.
The back-to-back fire incidents at the medical college sparked protests by opposition political parties who alleged safety lapses and accused authorities of hiding information and not allowing people's representatives and media inside the building.
Kozhikode MP M K Raghavan said two mishaps in the same building within a span of three days were serious and added that he would write to the PM and the CM seeking a comprehensive probe. He said it must cover all aspects and ascertain whether there were lapses while constructing the building under central govt-sponsored PMSSY programme at a cost of Rs 200 crore.
Following Friday's fire, four patients who were on ventilators or receiving oxygen support had died. But a preliminary postmortem report found that none of them had died due to inhalation of smoke. However, a five-member medical team is probing whether the patients were under distress during Friday's incident.