Fire kills at least 13 babies in Iraq hospital
Inquiry underway into tragedy where nothing went right
BAGHDAD — If there were one safe place in Iraq, it should be a hospital nursery, locked down for the night with dozens of babies nestled inside.
But here, not even that is a given. When a fire started late Tuesday night in the maternity wing of one of Baghdad’s main hospitals, it quickly engulfed the babies’ room. And then, in another Iraqi tragedy in a horrifying line of preventable ones, nothing worked.
Hospital workers raced to save the infants, but no one could find the keys to unlock the nursery. Inexplicably, no nurses seemed to be inside. Apparently, none of the fire extinguishers functioned. It took nearly an hour and a half for firefighters to arrive.
Some thought the initial cause may have been an oxygen tank explosion that set off an electrical fire. But on Wednesday morning, only one thing was certain: At least 13 infants were dead, and, with them, a small piece of Iraq’s future.
There was Yaman Muaad, a baby boy born by cesarean section on Tuesday who died a few hours later. There was Jafar Kahtan, a baby being treated for breathing difficulties. There was Zahra Hussein, a baby girl born on Monday, whose grandfather was frantically looking for her on Wednesday.
Many more were still unaccounted for. And at least 25 people, mostly infants, were being treated for burns or smoke inhalation.
All Iraqi officials could manage was what they typically do in the face of tragedy: establish a committee.
“A committee has been formed to investigate the incident, and so far we don’t know the reasons of the incident,” Dr. Ahmed al-Hadari, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, said at a news conference on Wednesday. “We are waiting the results of the investigations.”
After years of unsolved tragedy and unanswered demands for improvements, hardly anyone here believes official promises anymore.
“Such tragedies have become normal to Iraqi officials, and this case will be closed, just as the other ones,” said Adnan Hussein, acting editor-in-chief at Al Mada, one of Baghdad’s daily newspapers.
In their agony and tears as they gathered outside Yarmouk hospital Wednesday morning, families of the dead babies were inconsolable. Some even made accusations of arson, though there was no evidence to support that claim.
“There was screaming,” said Mariam Thijeel, the mother of Yaman, describing the scene at the hospital early Wednesday. “The power was cut off, and then the doors got locked on us, and there was no man in the newborn section, and we could not save any babies.”
She described a scene of panic and chaos, and said that people in the hospital had tried desperately to find someone with keys to the hospital wing that was on fire, the doors of which were locked. “We asked the help of one of the employees, but she said, ‘I cannot help you with anything, because it’s a fire,’” Thijeel said.
Painful reminders of the Iraqi state’s degradation are all around. The U.S. spent billions of reconstruction money in Iraq to build hospitals and improve electricity. Yet the lights are on just a few hours a day from the public grid. Generators, if Iraqis can afford them, provide the rest.
Hospitals are facing deprivation not seen since the economic sanctions of the 1990s, in part because plummeting oil prices have left the government impoverished in the middle of a war against the Islamic State.