Safety First

The fire at Kolkata’s AMRI hospital that left at least 90 people dead served as an eye opener to the government of Jammu & Kashmir. After Kolkata incident Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah issued instructions for a safety audit of all major hospitals in the state. Its preliminary report has revealed that all major hospitals in Jammu and Kashmir lack the proper safety standards, putting thousands of patients at risk.

The audit was intended for 157 hospitals across the state and Dr. G.A. Bhat, Director General of Fire and Emergency Services says, “We were not able to audit all the hospitals as per our own norms as some of the hospitals did not share their building blueprints, layout plans with us and where people cooperated we gave our recommendations but the problem is whenever we give our recommendations they remain on papers only, nothing really happens on the ground.”

Dr. Bhat further says, “During the audit we found SKIMS hospital is the only hospital which was at least having Riser system and the basic firefighting equipment available on all floors but either the pipes were not attached to nozzles or pipes were not available. System is there but it needs maintenance.” He also says SKIMS hospital is an institute where there is always a heavy rush of patients but they don’t need to panic, as the fire service station near the hospital is always ready for their help. This station has an imported fire tender which costs Rs. six crores and it is exclusively available for SKIMS.

Before the report was sent to the chief minister, hospital management had already started working on the defunct firefighting equipment. Fire extinguishers which are available in almost every ward have been refilled; fire alarms and fire detection equipments are under renovation. Presently, the firefighting systems are put in place, but surprisingly none of them are connected to water sources.

Jang Bahadur Singh, Chief Security Officer SKIMS, who is reviewing the system thoroughly says, “Nozzles attached to the underground water storage were not functioning, but we have directed our engineers and it is going to be functional in two or three weeks. Besides that we have different kind of fire extinguishers available for different kind of fires (electric, chemical or others) and if God forbid any bigger incident happen were to happen, we have two exits on both sides of the wards from where patients can be easily evacuated along with their beds.” SKIMS hospital has an underground water storage tank with a capacity of 250000 liters and a terrestrial tank as well. In this hospital, even a circular has been issued to all officials of the hospital to switch off their room heaters, gas heaters, and air conditioners while leaving their rooms. more