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Six patients have been killed in a fire that broke out at the intensive care unit (ICU) of the Sultanah Aminah Hospital in Johor Baru.
Many of the patients were evacuated to other wards after the fire broke out at the building's top floor at 9am on Tuesday (Oct 25).
Johor Baru (South) OCPD Asst Comm Sulaiman Salleh said the victims were all patients warded at the ICU, located on the second floorof the hospital's main building.
The Fire and Rescue Department confirmed in a tweet that seven people had been trapped in the building, and that six of those had perished in the blaze.One person was successfully rescued.
Of the victims, four were female and two were male.
Asst Comm Sulaimansaid all the victims were in their 50s.
“We believe that all the victims died due to suffocation caused by the thick smoke in the ward,” he said at the scene.
Photographs posted on Facebook by the Malaysian health ministry’s director-general Noor Hisham Abdullah showed black smoke billowing from the hospital’s second floor and fire raging inside the building.
“I have been informed that there are victims due to the fire including patients and staff. A sad day for all of us,” he said in an SMS message to Agence France-Presse.
Mr Noor Hisham also said one patient and two hospital staff are in critical condition due to smoke inhalation injuries and burns.
He said other patients were being sent to nearby hospitals, adding that “faulty wiring or a short circuit might be the cause but need to reconfirm.”
Asst Comm Sulaiman said that there were 193 staff and 294 patients at the hospital at the time of the incident.
He said there were eight staff and seven patients in the ICU when the fire broke out.
The one person rescued suffered 80 per centburns on his body.
It is understood that patients in the maternity ward, including some who had just given birth, were evacuated safely.
Johor Fire and Rescue Department director Othman Abdullah said that the department received a distress call at 8.56am.
“We deployed 10 fire engines with 160 personnel from Johor Baru, Tebrau, Kulai, and Johor Jaya fire stations to the scene.The fire affected two floors of the main HSA building but we managed to stop it from spreading to other floors,” he said.
(THE STRAITS TIMES)
