This picture taken and released by the Tainan Fire Department yesterday shows firemen tending to rescued patients outside the Sinying Hospital following a fire, near the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan.
Tainan: A blaze tore through a Taiwan hospital for bed-bound seniors and mentally ill patients yesterday, killing 12 and injuring 60, with police reportedly arresting a patient suspected of starting the fire.
The fire erupted before dawn at Beimen nursing facility in south Taiwan’s Tainan city, whose 115 patients included people in their 90s, with several left on their own to escape dense smoke that filled the building.
Local media said police had arrested a person believed to be a hospital patient on suspicion of starting the blaze -- Taiwan’s worst hospital fire in years. Police and prosecutors declined to comment.
Closed-circuit TV footage taken moments after the blaze broke out showed hospital staff scrambling to put out the fire, while elderly patients struggled to escape down the corridor in their wheelchairs.
“My mother saw the fire and smelled the smoke so she got on her wheelchair and pushed herself out. She is very brave and very lucky,” the daughter of 94-year-old survivor Wang Ho-shou said.
Another patient told Central News Agency he was lucky to escape the fire as he was able to walk on his own and was later rescued by firefighters.
“It was pitch black and the heavy smoke was unbearable, it was really horrifying,” he was quoted by the agency as saying.
The United Evening News said four patients lost their lives at the nursing facility, while eight others died after being taken to other hospitals in the area. The deaths were believed to be caused by smoke inhalation.
Television footage showed rescuers and hospital staff pushing out unconscious patients in their wheelchairs or beds, with many laid out on the lawn in front of the building as they tried to resuscitate the serious cases with CPR.
One crying woman was shown clutching the hand of an elderly man who lay lifeless in his pyjamas at the hospital entrance.
Fire officials said the fire possibly started in a crammed storage room on the second floor of the five-floor building, a branch of the public Sinying Hospital.
Premier Sean Chen expressed his shock, while President Ma Ying-jeou sent his condolences to the families of the victims, according to government statements.
“President Ma... has instructed the health department to provide emergency shelter and follow-up treatment,” his office said.
Tainan mayor Lai Ching-te said that the fire was unusually deadly because the hospital was in a relatively remote area and most of the patients were immobile.
Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta sought to pacify anxious relatives of patients who rushed to the hospital, saying that authorities were trying to identify the dead and injured as soon as possible, according to TVBS cable news channel.
Chiu also announced that an island-wide check on fire equipment in all medical facilities will be conducted this week.
AFP
