Daijiworld Media Network - Kalaburagi (SP)

Kalaburagi, Mar 24: Fire tragedy caused by short circuit in the air conditioner unit in the infants emergency ward of the district hospital here on Wednesday March 23 threatened to result in devastation of catastrophic proportions. But, thanks to presence of mind shown by employees at the hospital, no lives were lost.

Fire began to rage in the children's emergency unit of the hospital and soon acquired threatening proportions. But the infants had miraculous escape as the personnel showed exemplary presence of mind.

Immediately after fire was noticed in the emergency room, an employee of the hospital immediately broke open the glass of the room and with the help of his colleagues and others, evacuated all the 26 newborn babies out of the ward. But for this timely action, the hospital would have gone through a major tragedy.

The four air-conditioning units in the ward suffered from short circuit due to overloading. Wires of these units also caught fire, and thick smoke filled the ward within no time and bad odour started to spread in the hospital. One of the hospital employees, Fakirappa, immediately broke open the glass door and windows with his bare hands, and with the support of nurses, parents, and other people present, immediately brought all the infants out of the emergency ward. The children would have otherwise faced high risk of getting suffocated.

Out of these 26 children, 19 were shifted to emergency units of local private hospitals like Basaveshwara, Khwaja Bande Nawaaz etc. The other children were provided accommodation in other departments of the district hospital. Fire brigade personnel visited the hospital soon and extinguished the fire before it could spread to other departments.

Inspector general of police, B Shivakumar, superintendent of police, Amit Singh, Dr Nalini, and others rushed to the spot after coming to know of the incident and inspected the spot.