Fire services to take stock of private hospitals

BHUBANESWAR: The AMRI Hospital tragedy in Kolkata has set the ball rolling with the Fire Services wing of State Police ordering a fire audit of all private hospitals and nursing homes in Odisha. A high-level committee headed by Chief Fire Officer has been constituted to examine all the health facilities. The Fire Prevention Officer and Assistant/Deputy Fire Officer (for the respective cities) will be part of the panel which will make a detailed assessment of the hospitals and nursing homes. Currently, in the absence of fire services rule, the Wing does not have any penal powers and cannot even impose a deadline on the erring hospitals and health facilities.ADG (Fire Services) Binoy Behera said, the rule framework is in the last stage and is expected to be notified soon. “However, we do not want to sit idle and would like to finish the audit in the meantime,” he added. The Fire Services wing is, currently, looking for four major fire-prevention measures - floor-wise lay-out, fire hydrant, installation of extinguishers and fire escape. Behera said, all hospitals and nursing homes will have to display at their entrance diagrammatic floor-wise layout so that firefighters can have a fair knowledge of the building. While fire hydrants are a must, hospitals which are located on narrow lanes will have to sink bore-wells for linkage with the hydrants. Similarly, fire extinguishers will have to be installed basing on the floor-area, emergency exit routes will have to be created. “Once we are done with the audit, we will give the health facilities a deadline to comply,” Behera said. The enforcement, he informed, will be based on the fire services rules (if notified by that time) or the Health Department and regional development authorities will be recommended to take necessary action, which may include a shut-down, in case the facilities are found to have severely compromised with fire safety norms. NCP Queries on Hospitals’ SafetyBhubaneswar:Leader of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Amar Prasad Satpathy demanded that the State Government should make a statement in the Assembly on the measures taken to prevent fire accidents like the one at AMRI Hospital in Kolkata where more than 90 people died. Raising the issue during the Zero Hour on Tuesday, Satpathy asked whether the Health Department had put in place any system to prevent such disasters. The Health Minister should make a statement to inform the members about steps taken by the State Government in this regard.