TIRUPATI: Hospital staff not having adequate training in handling emergencies like a fire mishap is a major concern. But how can they be trained if the hospital does not have any firefighting equipment? When it comes to fire safety, every inadequacy appears to spring from yet another lacuna, with no solution to any of them.In Chittoor district, none of the government hospitals including SVR Ruia Hospital in Tirupati is constructed as per the National Building Code. In the wake of the fire mishap at AMRI Hospital in Kolkata, Express team tried to find out the safety systems in place at SVR Ruia, which is major referral hospital in the Rayalaseema region, covering not only Chittoor but also Kadapa, Anantapur and Nellore districts.The hospital, besides dearth of doctors, is devoid of necessary firefighting equipment.Even more appalling is that the hospital administration exhibited no knowledge of either safety norms or the equipment available at the hospital.They said no major fire mishap resulting in loss of life or property occurred in the last three decades and they were confident that nothing would happen now or in future.The hospital has wide corridors and adequate ventilation and the chances of fire mishap are very less, they said.However, Express found that the hospital, constructed and later extended over a large area, was a maze. Anyone entering the building is simply lost. Though there are staircases and many doors, they are not as per the National Building Code.There are no proper exits, no external stair cases and no firefighting equipment at hand in case of an emergency. Further, vacant rooms and corridors are being used as storage spaces, thereby increasing chances of fire. The corridors of the hospital are boxed and sealed with grills. One has to really search and cover quite a distance to find an exit from the building.According to Tirupati station fire officer J Ramanaiah, Ruia hospital comes under the category of buildings less than 15 meters in height, with a plot area exceeding 1000 sq metres. "It should have fire extinguishers, hose reels, pipelines, yard hydrants, automatic sprinkler systems, manual call points, automatic fire detection alarm, underground tank of 1,00,000 litres capacity, terrace tank of 10,000 litres," he said. However, none of those are found at the hospital.Though officials claim they have some fire extinguishers, they are not sure of the number and are also not aware of when the annual maintenance check of the building and equipment was last done.There are two aspects that fire officials insist onfire safety and life safety. "Firefighting equipment and water storage points etc are all for fire safety. But the most important is life safety i.e. to ensure that people are in no way harmed. There should be an exit for every 30 metres on the ground floor and a stair case for ever 30 metres on upper floors. Further, there should a ramp and an external staircase," he said. Unfortunately, one does not find any such arrangements at SVR Ruia.Since there is no adequate firefighting equipment, there is also no scope for conducting fire drills periodically or to train the staff. Procedural tangles appear to be a major problem at Ruia hospital.Asked if government hospitals are given separate allocations for equipping themselves with firefighting systems, district medical and health officer (DMHO) Lalitha Kumari said there was no such provision. The only thing that hospital authorities could do is to alert the nearest fire station in the event of a mishap.Fire officials says more than fire, smoke and stampede in a panicky situation cause more harm, especially in hospitals.If hospital or any other institutional building is equipped to deal with the above, then loss of life could be minimised.
Comments
0 comment