89 dead in Indian hospital fire

A fire at a private hospital in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata on Friday killed 89 people, most of them patients who choked to death because of the smoke, police said. It was the second major blaze at the Advanced Medicare and Research Institute (AMRI) since December 2008.
An electrical short circuit was the likely cause of the fire, a senior AMRI official said. But the fire department lodged a complaint with the police against the hospital authorities for negligence and violating safety norms, prompting the hospital's license to be revoked, NDTV reported. Six members of the AMRI board, including the two owners, RS Goenka and SK Todi, were arrested, NDTV reported.
The victims included three hospital staff and 27 women. Only 65 of the 89 bodies had been identified by the evening. A further 92 patients were admitted to other hospitals after being rescued, police said. The fire broke out in a basement storage area, according to West Bengal Municipal Affairs Minister Firhad Hakim.
The 160-bed, four-storey hospital is located in a congested area in south Kolkata's Dhakuria area. It took at least 90 minutes after the fire broke out for fire-fighters to arrive at the scene, according to relatives of victims, interviewed by NDTV. Though fire-fighters were able to put out the fire within a few hours, smoke from burning medical supplies, chemicals and gas cylinders stored in the basement engulfed the upper floors of the hospital, trapping patients.
Many of the victims were in the critical patients' and orthopaedic wards and unable to escape the smoke, relatives said. Fire-fighters used hydraulic ladders to break open windows, to let out the smoke and rescue patients. "There was no fire alarm," a sobbing woman told NDTV. "The hospital staff disappeared. My mother would have come out of hospital in a few days' time. Now she is dead."