‘Minor fire’ causes chaos at JPMC’s emergency department

Karachi
Dozens of patients had to be evacuated from the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) on Thursday afternoon when a fire broke out in its emergency department.
The JPMC officials claimed that it was a small fire caused by a short circuit the hospital’s electricians fixed the problem in no time.
“A fire erupted, probably due to a short-circuit, in the emergency ward today,” said Dr Seemin Jamali, the JPMC’s deputy executive director. “Patients and their attendants were immediately evacuated and shifted to different wards of the hospital. However, was no injury or any other damage to life was caused.”
Dr Jamali said though the fire was small and was immediately controlled with the help of fire extinguishers available at the emergency ward, but the smoke spread through the air-conditioning vents inside the whole department and spread panic among the patients and staff.
“We have admitted the serious patients into the intensive care and surgical units, while those who could be sent home were discharged after they received the necessary medical treatment,” said Dr Jamali. “The hospitals electricians arrived promptly and fixed the problem.”
She described the fire as a minor incident and said the JPMC’s electrical team and officials were working to fix the problem which led to the eruption of fire. She expressed the hope that the problem will be fixed by Friday morning and the facility would resume functioning as usual.
However, the JPMC staff claimed that an chaos erupted at the emergency department as patients, their attendants and doctors all rushed outside the building when smoke began billowing in the premises.
“Fortunately, nobody was injured since staff from other departments and the hospital administration responded timely and evacuated the patients to safety. Despite panic and fear, nobody got hurt,” said a security guard deployed at the emergency ward.
The city chief fire officer, when contacted, said he was not informed of any fire at the JPMC probably because it was indeed a minor incident. “Perhaps they put the fire out locally and did not require our assistance,” he said.