Victoria Hospital Bengaluru: Fire incident in seminar room prompted swift emergency action and safe patient evacuation, doctors explain

BENGALURU: An accidental fire broke out in a seminar room in the burns block at Victoria Hospital in the early hours of Tuesday. According to the officials, there were no casualties reported.

The hospital staff relocated around 26 patients from the burns ward to a different block and ensured uninterrupted medical care and treatment.HOD Dr Yogeshwarappa Patil, speaking to the media, said the fire was noticed in the switchboard of the refrigerator plug connected to the board on the first floor of the seminar room around 3 am. She activated and tried to turn off the power supply. The fire was spreading fast and was out of control.

She alerted me, and subsequently, the fire and emergency services and the police were alerted. The administrators were also informed at the same time.

I instructed them to activate the code red, which means an emergency due to fire in our building. All the staff are trained in code red, and they came into activation. The place where the fire broke out and the patients' ward had some distance, but the smoke was thickening.

We assumed it would become more. The patients on the first floor were shifted to the ground floor. Later, they were shifted to H block. Dr Divya alerted the brothers soon after noticing the fire and turned off the main switch. It was an administrative block that has our seminar room, library, office room, and doctor’s lounge, Yogeshwarappa said.After the code red was activated, the nursing staff, group D employees, security, all doctors, and other medical fraternity staff all became active, and their first preference was to shift patients.

They brought the oxygen-connected trolleys and shifted the ICU patients through the trolleys.The H block was 100 metres away. The walkable attenders also joined the operation. They used the wheelchairs, and three battery-operated vehicles rushed to the spot and shifted the patients. Within 20 minutes, all the patients were shifted, he added.Dr Divya said, I was the first one to witness it. Due to the patients' load, none of us took rest.

We were all awake. When I wanted to use the washroom near the seminar room, I heard some noise near the fridge. I initially didn’t recognise the fire, but since the noise was continuous, I had a close look and found the fire in the switchboard. I alerted the brothers on duty. They immediately responded and turned off the main switch.We tried to douse the fire by using fire extinguishers, but the fire spread to adjacent places.

Code red was activated. The staff and patient attenders helped us shift the patients. There were 10 patients on the first floor, five of whom were in the post-operative ward in the ICU. Around 16 patients were on the ground floor. All patients were shifted as a precautionary measure, she added.Shifting patients in the ICU is challenging. Fortunately, there were no patients on ventilators. If the patients were on ventilators, it would have been much more difficult to shift them. The burn patients should not be touched with bare hands because they have burns all over the body. The rescue team used blankets and carefully shifted them safely, Dr Divya said.

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