Patients complained about AC that may have caused Virar hospital fire, say victims’ families

Fifteen people had died in the fire accident at the Maharashtra hospital. ThePrint also spoke to rescue personnel to describe what they first saw when they arrived at the spot.

Soot coats the windows of the ICU ward where a fire broke out at Vijay Vallabh Hospital in Virar, Maharashtra | Angana Chakrabarti | ThePrint

Virar, Maharashtra: Twenty seven-year-old Kedar Shivaji Vilkar, a resident of Virar West in Maharashtra’s Palghar district, was sleeping soundly with the knowledge that his father, a Covid patient, was recovering well at Vijay Vallabh Hospital.

At 4 am Friday, he received a call from a doctor who told him that his father’s condition had worsened. Upon reaching the hospital — a four-storeyed private facility that had been converted to a Covid Care hospital — he witnessed a totally unexpected scene playing out.

A fire had broken out on the second floor of the hospital, which housed the ICU ward and where his father was being kept.

“There was a lot of chaos. But no one was saying anything. But the moment they put my father in the ambulance, I recognised it was him,” he said. Three and a half hours later, his father had passed away after having sustained severe burn injuries.

Kedar’s father, 56-year-old Shivaji Panduram Vilkar, was among the 15 ICU patients who died due to the fire.

This is the third fatal incident involving Covid patients to occur in the state. Last month, eight Covid patients died in a fire at Sunrise Hospital in Mumbai’s Bhandup West. Then on Wednesday, a leakage in the oxygen tank at Dr Zakir Hussain Hospital Nashik resulted in the deaths of 24 Covid patients.

‘Faulty air conditioning’

A press release by the Vasai Virar City Municipal Corporation (VVCMC) stated that the fire had broken out at 3:13 am “due to a spark in the air-conditioning, damaging the entire facility and leading to thick smoke and darkness”.

“There were 17 patients in the ICU. Of these, 13 could not move because they were plugged into the ventilator or oxygen units and died in the fire. The civic body shifted the other four to other hospitals,” the press release stated.

Two of the four patients who were rescued, including Shivaji Vilkar, died later.

Family members of four patients ThePrint spoke to said that they weren’t informed about the fire by hospital authorities. Relatives of two of the patients, who asked not to be quoted on the incident, said they had found out about it on the news.

Bhakti Save, whose 43-year-old sister Supriya Deshmukh also died in the fire, said, “We didn’t get any call from the authorities. I got to know about this from the relatives of the patients whose bed was next to my sister’s.”

She added, “After reaching the hospital I saw that everyone was asking the authorities which patients had been affected … Then, after a lot of requests, we were told the names.”

According to Bhakti and Kedar, the air conditioner had stopped working in the ICU ward in the past two days. “They were already having an AC problem for 2 days. My sister had also complained about it. She herself was drenched because of this, her bed was wet. So I had to get a fan installed there.”

Speaking to ThePrint, Deputy Commissioner Kishore Gavas, Vasai Virar Municipal Corporation, told ThePrint, “There was a fault in the AC … an FIR has been lodged in the case and police are investigating further.”

ThePrint reached the hospital administration, including Managing Director and CEO Dr Dilip Shah, over WhatsApp for a comment but didn’t receive a response till the publishing of this report.

‘ICU ward was filled with smoke’

When ThePrint arrived at the site Friday afternoon, police personnel had been deployed around the hospital and officials were frequently going inside the building to inspect it.

Two windows on the second floor had been broken and the surrounding walls bore signs of the fire.

The firemen at the Fire Brigade station in the nearby Mhada colony recounted the gut-wrenching scenes from the night.

Station in-charge Vishal Janardhan Shirke said, “We got a call at 3:13am from one of the hospital staff. We got out within one minute and reached them exactly by 3:18am … On the second floor was the ICU ward with 17 patients. It was filled with smoke.”

“Our night in-charge Kiran was there and with him our complete team. He used an oxygen mask and went in. After that he first broke the windows, after which the smoke started reducing, they could see that several of the patients had fallen off their beds.”

Meanwhile, the doctors had managed to evacuate four patients who were still conscious and could walk. According to Shirke, the other 13 were presumably dead. It later became apparent that some had suffocated while others had sustained severe burns.

He noted that although the fire systems at the hospital were updated, the incident is likely to have occurred because of a short circuit in the air-conditioning. “The AC has been working for 24 hours for years on end. They should have been an alternative for the ACs. But we couldn’t spot such a system,” he noted.

The Uddhav Thackeray government has ordered a probe in the Virar incident and announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the next of kin of the patients who had died and Rs 1 lakh to the critically injured patients.

(Edited by Manasa Mohan)