Fire engine on the territory of Semashko Clinical Hospital, where a fire broke out in the intensive care unit during the night.
Three patients died and eight others were injured in an overnight fire in the intensive care unit of the Semashko Regional Clinical Hospital in Ryazan.
A ventilator is believed to have caught fire, as it did in Moscow and St. Petersburg last May.
According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, a fire broke out in the procedural office of the resuscitation department, where Covid-19 patients were located.
The fire alarm was received at approximately 3:30 am.
The area of the fire was only 15 square meters, and the fire was quickly extinguished (according to the Russian Emergencies Ministry, at 4:17).
Patients died of smoke inhalation. “Interfax was informed by the hospital administration that all the deceased suffered from smoke inhalation.”
The victims also suffered from varying degrees of poisoning.
The victims include two nurses.
There are several versions of the fire related to the artificial lung ventilator (ALV).
According to preliminary data, the cause may have been the ignition of the wiring, the hospital told Interfax in the morning. “There was a high load on the ventilators, and the wiring couldn’t withstand it, so it caught fire,” the agency’s informant said.
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The end of the story: Promotional Podcasts “One of the versions currently being investigated is that the fire could have been caused by the ignition of a fan. It was preceded by a lightning strike,” a source in the emergency services said, according to TASS.
“The main cause was the ignition of the respirator connected to the patient,” a RIA Novosti source reported.
Later, the governor of the Ryazan region, Nikolai Lyubimov, confirmed on the “Russia-24” TV channel: “There was a fire in the respirator, the nurse first tried to extinguish it, the second nurse joined in”.
According to him, a patient from the ward where the fire occurred and two critically ill patients on ventilators from other wards died.
The Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) currently states that different versions of the causes of the fire are being considered: “It will be possible to speak definitively about the causes of the incident only after a series of investigations.”
According to the Interfax source, other versions are being considered: faulty medical equipment and life-support systems, as well as careless handling of the fire by either a patient or a staff member.
TASS and RIA Novosti interlocutors also suggested that a short circuit may have occurred in one of the wards.
This is not the first fire related to ventilator exposure. In May last year, several patients with coronavirus died in fires in Moscow and St. Petersburg. As a result, the operation of “Aventa-M” ventilators was suspended. At that time, the Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare (Roszdravnadzor) did not find a direct link between violations in the production of ventilators and their ignition. According to the data of the state procurement portal, in 2019, Semashko Regional Hospital ordered the repair of the American ventilator iVent201, and in 2020, two Chinese ventilators Boaray 5000D were delivered there, reports RIA Novosti.
The entire hospital building in Ryazan has been evacuated. According to Interfax, 34 of the 43 evacuated patients are infected with the coronavirus. The number of Covid-19 patients who were in the intensive care unit has been distributed to the “red zones” of other hospitals, said Denis Arapov, press secretary of the governor of the Ryazan region.
“Five minutes later, literally, firemen and ambulances arrived. All the patients, including 10 people from the intensive care unit, and 26 patients from the second floor were quickly evacuated,” the governor himself told the Russia-24 TV channel.
“The fire protection systems operated normally, according to the Regional Emergency Situations Department. “They all worked as intended. However, fire extinguishing systems are not provided for such facilities,” a representative of the department told Interfax. According to him, extinguishing the fire was complicated by heavy smoke on the first floor as well as the structural features of the building, while firefighters prevented the fire from spreading to the rest of the building.
A criminal case has been opened to investigate the deaths of three people under Article 109 Part 3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (causing death by negligence).
According to a statement from the regional branch of the Investigative Committee of Russia, the “timeliness of evacuation measures” and “compliance with the level of fire safety provision” with established norms will be examined.