A fire broke out at Apollo Gleneagles hospital off Eastern Metropolitan bypass on Monday morning.
Three fire tenders went to the spot and put out the flames. No one was injured.
Sovan Chatterjee, state Fire and Emergency Services minister has ordered a high-level inquiry. He along with director general Fire and Emergency Services department took a tour of the hospital and inspected the fire fighting arrangements. Chatterjee has expressed displeasure over the fire fighting system. He said the opinion of experts may be sought while conducting the inquiry. He warned that stringent action would be taken if it was found that the fire fighting system was inadequate.
Around 9.15am, the relatives of some patients spotted smoke that was coming out of the first floor of the hospital. Ashish Mukherjee, a resident of Nagerbazar who had brought his relative informed the fire brigade. Three fire fighters were pressed into service. The fire broke out in the Operation Theatre ( OT) which has been closed for quite some time. The smoke then spread to the mezzanine floor and finally reached the ground floor. Meanwhile, the Fire and Emergency Services department has filed an FIR against Apollo Gleneagles hospital.
The patients and their relatives panicked and some of them were seen running to safety. Sovan Chatterjee along with senior officials of Fire and Emergency Services department reached the spot.
There was some confusion over who had alerted the fire authorities first. While the relatives of patients claimed that Ashish Mukherjee was the one who had first informed the fire brigade and then fire fighters doused the flames, Rana Dasgupta, COO of Apollo said that the flames had been put out by hospital staff trained in fire fighting. However, Fire and Emergency Services department officials claimed their fire fighters had done the needful.
Sovan Chatterjee has expressed his displeasure over the fire fighting arrangements in Apollo. He said the locking system in the AC duct was either faulty or did not work and because of this, the smoke had spread to the ground floor. " The fire at AMRI was not a big one but the smoke spread claiming several lives," he said adding that following that tragedy the state Fire and Emergency department imposed stringent laws which health care establishments are supposed to follow. It may be recalled that a fire broke out at AMRI, Dhakuria in December 2011 and it had claimed more than 90 lives. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had rushed to the hospital and personally supervised rescue operations.