92 killed in Iraq Covid hospital fire
CORONAVIRUS WARD GUTTED AFTER OXYGEN TANK EXPLODES Anger mounts over the blaze in which over 100 injured A tragedy waiting to happen, says medic at hospital Similar fire in Baghdad in April killed 82
NASSIRIYA: The death toll from a fire that tore through a coronavirus hospital in southern Iraq rose to 92, health officials said on Tuesday, as authorities faced accusations of negligence from grieving relatives and a doctor who works there.
More than 100 people — patients and visitors — were injured in the blaze on Monday night in Nassiriya, officials said.
An investigation showed the fire began when sparks from faulty wiring spread to an oxygen tank that then exploded, police and civil defence authorities said.
It was Iraq’s second such tragedy in three months, and the country’s president on Tuesday blamed corruption for both. A statement from the prime minister’s office called for national mourning.
Rescue teams were on Tuesday using a heavy crane to remove the charred and melted remains of the part of the city’s Al Hussain hospital where Covid-19 patients were being treated, as relatives gathered nearby.
A medic at the hospital, who declined to give his name and whose Monday shift ended a few hours before the fire broke out, said the absence of basic of safety measures meant it was an accident in the making.
“The hospital lacks a fire sprinkler system or even a simple fire alarm,” he said.
“We complained many times over the past three months that a tragedy could happen any moment from a cigarette stub but every time we get the same answer from health officials: ‘we don’t have enough money’.”
In April, a similar explosion at Baghdad Covid-19 hospital killed at least 82 and injured 110. The head of Iraq’s semi-official Human Rights Commission said on Monday’s blast showed how ineffective safety measures still were in a health system crippled by war and sanctions.
“To have such a tragic incident repeated few months later means that still no (sufficient) measures have been taken to prevent them,” Ali Bayati said.
The fact that the hospital had been built with lightweight sandwich panels separating the wards had made the fire spread faster, local civil defence authority head Salah Jabbar said.
Health and civil defence managers in the city and the hospital’s manager had been suspended and arrested on Monday on the orders of Prime Minister Mustafa al Kadhimi, his office said.
Government investigators arrived in Nassiriya on Tuesday morning, according to a statement.
At the city’s morgue, anger spread among people gathered as they waited to receive their relatives’ bodies.
“No quick response to the fire, not enough firefighters. Sick people burned to death. It’s a disaster,” said Mohammed Fadhil, who was waiting there to receive his bother’s body.
Two health officials said the dead from Monday’s fire included 21 charred bodies that were still unidentified.
The blaze trapped many patients inside the coronavirus ward who rescue teams struggled to reach, a health worker said on Monday before entering the burning building.