Kin of rescued babies flag lax fire safety at Jhansi hospital. ‘Extinguishers didn’t work, only 1 exit’

Principal has denied that fire extinguishers failed to work. Father of rescued newborn also says special neonatal care unit was over capacity & most staff 'fled' through back door.

Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) where 10 infants died due to a fire tragedy, in Jhansi, Saturday.

Jhansi: The fire extinguishers inside the special neonatal care unit (SNCU) of the medical college in Uttar Pradesh’s Jhansi Friday, where 10 newborns died in a fire, did not function and the inner ward had only one exit, according to family members whose babies were narrowly saved from the blaze.

The fire erupted late Friday night in the neonatal unit at the Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College, one of the largest government hospitals in the state’s Bundelkhand region. The fire may have started due to an electrical short circuit, fire department officials said.

While Uttar Pradesh government officials have said that four fire extinguishers were used at the spot to tame the blaze, family members of the rescued infants have accused the hospital of negligence and lax fire safety systems. They also said they were forced to carry out the evacuations of the children, including their own, after most of the hospital staff “fled” using the back door of the SNCU.

Speaking to ThePrint, Kapil Yadav, the father of a newborn who was rescued from the unit, said, “Only one female and one male staff member were trying to help while the rest fled from the back door.”

Yadav was among the first ones to enter the SNCU and attempt to douse the blaze.

“I was outside the SNCU when a woman who had gone inside to feed one of the newborns came out screaming that a fire had broken out inside the unit. She feared that the babies wouldn’t survive. I, along with two attendants, attempted to enter the unit.”

He said the attendants were forced to push through after the SNCU staff tried to stop them. “When they entered the SNCU, they helped break one of the windows to the left of the door as I took charge outside the window,” he said. They then started pulling out the children lying in the outer unit of the SNCU.

He said he tried to use one of the fire extinguishers but it did not work. Visuals from the spot, accessed by ThePrint, show that some fire extinguishers had been manufactured five years ago, in 2019. The average fire extinguisher lasts 10-12 years. However, this depends on the type of extinguisher and its condition.

When contacted, District Magistrate Avinash Kumar directed ThePrint to the video statement issued Saturday by the medical college principal on allegations that the fire extinguishers failed to work at the spot.

In his statement, Dr Narendra Singh Sengar denied the allegations.

“Four fire extinguishers had been used which were totally functional and which had been refilled in June or had been purchased new.”

He added: “About the news report, I want to say that when the fire broke out and the doors were broken, several old fire extinguishers had fallen at the spot which is why this information has spread even as a fully functional fire extinguisher was used at the spot.”

The chief medical superintendent of the medical college Sachin Mahur told ThePrint that most of the fire extinguishers were functional and would have expired in 2025. However, he admitted that there was possibility that the staff at the spot didn’t know how to use them.

“It is possible that one old extinguisher was kept but the pictures shown in the media are not of the fire extinguishers which were inside the SNCU. The staffers, like junior doctors, are mostly the ones who keep changing within a few years. They have an idea about fire fighting but they are no experts in the domain,” he said.

‘Over capacity, only one exit’

Yadav also said that there was only one exit from the inner unit of the SNCU and that it was over capacity.

“Each of the machines in the inner and the outer units had four-five babies in them. There was not a single machine which had a single baby. All had more than one baby,” he said.

He further said that no fire alarms rang in the SNCU.

“All of us were caught unaware by the fire and were only informed about it when the woman who had gone inside the SNCU to feed their baby came out screaming about the fire. Only one alarm went off in the female ward next to the SNCU when the smoke had spread there half an hour later,” Yadav said.

Ram Kumar, the father of another rescued newborn, also said that he heard no alarms. A resident of Jhingora village in the Nirwari district of Madhya Pradesh, Kumar, whose wife delivered a baby girl on 22 October, also said that there was only one exit in the inner unit of the SNCU.

“I was sleeping outside when a woman who had gone inside the SNCU to feed her baby screamed and informed us that the unit was under fire.”

“My baby girl was inside the inner unit. I could not spot my baby there but found two children there whom I brought outside. My baby had been saved by someone else. There was only one exit door in the inner unit of the SNCU,” he said.

Rajkishore Rai, chief fire officer, Jhansi, told ThePrint that there should be at least two doors—one entry and one exit—in a particular building. “There was a higher concentration of oxygen in the SNCU which resulted in the fire spreading in the entire unit.”

“The fire extinguishers were functional,” he added.

Separately, chief medical superintendent Mahur admitted that, despite SNCU having the capacity for only 18 babies, there were 49 babies inside the unit at the time of the fire because a new section of the SNCU—built as an expansion of the existing ward—was to start operations within a month.

‘Trust in government broken’

Yadav also blamed the hospital staff for abandoning the babies.

“The doctors are not at fault but most of the staff fled the spot. Only one female staff and another male staffer helped rescue the babies while all others fled from the back door. The security guards were the worst. They were the first ones to flee,” he said.

According to Yadav, a hospital staffer, Kripal Singh, who helped rescue the children, told the attendants that all children had been saved when at least 10 still remained in the inner unit.

“After several children were saved, the staffer said that there were no more children inside the inner unit but at least 10 children remained inside and died,” he said.

“We managed to rescue all the babies lying near the window but several of those inside the inner unit could not be saved due to a misjudgment on the part of a hospital staff who helped us rescue the children,” he added.

He said that his trust in the government had been broken and he decided to shift his child to a private hospital, despite the opposition he faced from the staff.

As he was trying to save the children, he could not ascertain if his own child was among the children that were rescued. “When we ended the rescue, I started searching for my child among the babies handed over to the other attendants. I found that he had already been admitted to the emergency ward.”

He added, “I entered the emergency and was stopped from taking my child elsewhere but I had lost all trust in the government. I decided to take away my child at another facility and forcefully took him away and got him admitted to a private hospital.”

Meanwhile, another newborn admitted to SNCU who was rescued from the fire Friday died  Sunday. Hospital staff and DM Kumar said that the newborn was already in a critical condition and died due to a pre-existing condition.

(Edited by Sanya Mathur)