Department counting cost of Charlotte Maxeke fire
Gauteng health failed 2017 safety audits, DA’s Bloom
The Gauteng department of health says it will take a while before the cost of damage caused by the fire that engulfed Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, forcing the evacuation of nearly 700 patients, is known.
According to Gauteng premier David Makhura, fire broke out at the facility at 11.30am on Friday and then reignited again at night, forcing its closure for seven days to allow investigation and repair work to get under way.
Yesterday, Gauteng health department spokesperson Kwara Kekana said the cost of fixing the hospital was still unknown.
She also said details pertaining to the cost of the fire and the non-functional fire hydrants at the hospital could not be answered because of ongoing investigations.
“The relevant authorities are still on site conducting investigations involving the fire; once that process is concluded we will be able to give more details,” said Kekana.
Yesterday, The Sunday Times reported that fire hydrants at the facility were not working at the time of the fire. Kekana said Emergency Management Services discovered on arrival at the hospital that hose couplings used to connect fire hose to hydrants were missing.
“Water shuttling was done to deal with the fire and another fire hydrant vicinity was located. It was connected and water supply was sorted,” she said.
Kekana said the department, guided by the relevant authorities, will communicate what is the way forward in the next couple of days as it relates to resumption of service at the hospital.
“The department will use this opportunity like any other disaster to close any gaps or to improve its compliance and safety measures in hospitals.”
DA Gauteng spokesperson of health Jack Bloom said the latest incident of the fire that broke out at the hospital has opened a can of worms for the department.
“The health department failed safety audit reports across all its hospitals in 2017. Sadly and evidently this is now a challenge. In the past three years their head office – the Bank of Lisbon building – burnt down, the Tambo Memorial Hospital also caught fire two years ago among other hospitals like Bheki Mlangeni in Soweto,” he said.
Bloom said he was concerned about safety audits as the department of labour visited several Gauteng public hospitals in 2017 and all of them failed.
“I will be requesting information on safety assessments at all the hospitals. There have also been recent fires at Tambo Memorial Hospital and Bheki Mlangeni Hospital, something is clearly not right, ” he said.