New Delhi: Showing their presence of mind, alert staffers at the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital — the nerve centre for Delhi's battle against Covid — on Monday morning prevented a major mishap when they sprung into action and stopped a fast raging fire in the main Emergency Block from spreading.
The 1,500-bed facility is the largest hospital run by the Delhi government.
The seminar room in the seven-storey Emergency Block was locked when staffers first noticed the smoke coming from under the doors. "Showing alertness, they opened the room immediately and used small fire extinguishers to put it out as much as possible, until the fire tenders arrived," a senior official of the hospital said.
The fire had broken out in the seminar room, located on the ground floor of the Emergency Block, and all patients were immediately shifted, officials added. No casualty was reported, Delhi Fire Service officials said earlier in the day.
"The room was locked and if our staff had not been alert, it could have turned into a big incident. Their alertness and presence of mind averted a major fire incident, as it happened in a multi-storey block. The power supply had got briefly snapped too but we shifted all the patients on that floor to another area as smoke was spreading out," the LNJP Hospital official, also a senior doctor, said.
The room is used for conducting training sessions for doctors and other staff, she said. The official said that its staff are trained in firefighting and the training came in handy. "Also, our staff, be it doctors, nurses or others, have seen the most challenging times during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and so it has made them tougher I believe in handling a crisis situation," they added.
The official at the facility, located in the heart of Delhi, said the cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained but the smoke was coming out of the AC vents, indicating that a short circuit may have caused it. Atul Garg, the director of Delhi Fire Service, earlier said, "Six fire tenders were rushed to the spot," adding that the cause of the fire was being ascertained.