Frequent fires: Hospitals need to watch health of their electrical infra
Frequent hospital fires have put at risk the lives of Covid-19 patients in healthcare facilities across the country, calling for urgent preventive measures
Frequent hospital fires have put at risk the lives of Covid-19 patients in healthcare facilities across the country, calling for urgent preventive measures.
Given the poor enforcement of fire safety laws, fire mishaps at hospitals are not rare in the country. But they have never been as frequent as we are seeing since the pandemic. And the numbers are only going up.
From newspaper reports of fires in hospitals, there were roughly about 11 such fires during August to December. This number went up to 17 during January -May, leading to at least 70 deaths.
The reasons are obvious. As Covid cases shoot up phenomenally in the second wave of the pandemic, hospitals are constantly expanding their facilities, overloading their electrical circuits, eventually leading to fires.
An article on ‘Fire Safety hazards: How safe are our hospitals’ published in the Indian Journal of Community Medicine (Jan-March2020) observes that no hospital estimates accurately at the time of designing and execution, the electricity load. So much so that by the time a hospital is commissioned, it’s power requirement would have almost doubled from the earlier estimate and it goes up further by 25 per cent annually, as it adds newer facilities and gadgets, the article points out. .
Given that scenario, one can well imagine the overload on the circuit during the pandemic, with hospitals bursting with patients needing constant emergency care. High oxygen content in the air, sanitizer spills only add to the problem.
Besides, in the absence of regular maintenance, any of the overworked or malfunctioning gadgets could heat up and catch fire. A review of 33 major fires reported in hospitals across the country between January 2010 to December 2019 and published in the International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health (September 2020) pointed out that the most common cause of fires in hospitals was electrical short circuit with air conditioners being the most common source. In ten cases, fires originated at or near intensive care units.
So it is of utmost importance that hospitals do a regular electrical audit to check their sanctioned load and the actual consumption and upgrade the systems accordingly. Regular maintenance of all electric and electronic equipment and fire protection devices are also a must.
It is also extremely important for hospitals to comply with ‘Part IV of the National Building Code of India: fire and life safety’ formulated by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and incorporated in the fire safety laws of most states. . ‘Fire and Life Safety’, deals with three aspects of fire: fire prevention, life safety and fire protection.
Similarly, states/civic authorities running temporary health care facilities in urban and rural areas need to pay more attention to fire safety.. There are standards like the “ Fire precautionary measures in construction of temporary structures and pandals-code of practice” published by the BIS for temporary constructions, but obviously a temporary medical facility with life saving equipment, particularly oxygen cylinders (unlike piped oxygen in hospitals) need more specific standards of fire safety, keeping in mind the fact that these facilities cannot have some of the standard fire safety measures recommended for permanent structures. We therefore need to urgently draw up stringent standards for such temporary medical facilities.
But unfortunately, violations of fire safety laws are a rule rather than an exception , with a large number of hospitals in the country running without a fire NOC or without renewing their NOC
In December, the Supreme Court took suo motu cognizance of fires in Covid hospitals and issued detailed directions to all states and union territories to create an oversight mechanism to ensure compliance with fire safety laws by all Covid facilities and also conduct ‘at least once a month’ fire safety audits of each Covid hospital. .
The increased fires post-these directions speak volumes about the state of implementation. Are the states waiting for a contempt notice from the apex court to start taking some action?