Admn says 2 died, KGMU says none
LUCKNOW: A day after a massive fire broke out in the Trauma Centre of King George’s Medical University (KGMU) here on Saturday, the university administration admitted that five people died but “not die due to the blaze.”
However, a district administration committee probing the blaze said two patients died during the course of shifting.
The inquiry committee, that will submit its report on Monday or Tuesday, comprises district magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma, SSP Deepak Kumar, electrical safety officer and chief fire officer of the fire department.
According to the district magistrate, the fire was triggered due to overheating of some electrical equipment in the store.
“Two kids died before the fire broke out and three others, who were shifted to other wards, died during treatment,” said Prof Vijay Kumar, KGMU medical superintendent, while addressing newspersons on Sunday.
Vice chancellor Prof MLB Bhatt said doctors and medical staff were quick to respond to the tragedy and their decision to transfer patients was very correct.
During the hurriedly called press conference, Prof Bhatt claimed that KGMU team members worked swiftly and dedicatedly to rescue the patients. He, however, avoided questions from newspersons and left the conference hall saying that he had to go for selection committee interviews.
Ram Pyeri of Hardoi died at 7.30pm on Saturday due to cardiac arrest. Two other child-patients died at around 6.45pm before the fire broke out at 7 pm. One of them is from Lalitpur district while details of the other child were not available.
But according to the probe panel, two patients -- Sadhu Singh Rastogi, 44, of Lakhimpur Kheri and Hemant Kumar, 38, of Lucknow, died in the course of shifting them from the Trauma Centre.
Three other patients who died have nothing to do with the fire incident.
This was not the first time that fire broke out on the campus and the alarms remained silent. It seems no lessons have been learnt from the past incidents. Two months ago, a short circuit in one of the sleep labs in the department of physiology had caused a major fire resulting in loss of property but the water sprinklers installed there did not work.
According to reports, a day after the fire three more patients died due to lack of proper treatment.