Two patients died and another 20 were evacuated after a fire at the Covid hospital Movila in Ploiesti on Thursday morning. The fire started in a ward on the ground floor of the unit.
Two patients, men aged 74 and 75, died charred, and a nurse suffered burns after trying to put out the fire. Another 20 patients were evacuated, being transferred to the main building of the County Hospital, while three refused the transfer.
The 15 patients transferred after the fire are in stable condition were 14 in a COVID-19 ward and one in Intensive Care, the Ministry of Health announced. The nurse has burns on 20% of her body surface and requested that no other information about her health be transmitted publicly.
The State Sanitary Inspection has carried out checks at the County Hospital in Ploiești in the last two years, applying fines amounting to almost 90,000 lei. The Prahova Police opened a criminal file for manslaughter in this case, according to the institution’s spokeswoman, Mihaela Florescu.
The manager of the hospital, Bogdan Nica, says that the department was renovated, and the electrical installation had been checked and there are oxygen detectors. However, the hospital did not have a fire safety permit.
“Possibly, but I can’t say for sure, a default of the device started that fire. The ward had been revamped two years ago. We lacked the operating permit, but we were in the process of obtaining it, I had the file submitted for 2 months, no irregularities were found at the checks in February,” said the hospital manager.
In his turn, the Head of the Department for Emergency Situations, Raed Arafat said that fire started from a spark when a hospital bed was being moved.
“I talked to my colleagues there. There were two patients on non-invasive ventilators who were agitated. There was another nurse and a nursemaid in the ward. The nurse came out, the nursemaid moved a bed to get to the plug more easily. The fire started when the bed moved. From a spark, probably. Firefighters arrived very quickly, extinguished the fire in three minutes. There are no other people in serious condition. The nurse suffered burns and will be brought to Bucharest,” Arafat said.
The incident takes place less than a month and a half after the fire at the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Constanța, where 7 patients died. It is the fourth tragedy in less than a year, after the fires in Piatra Neamț and the “Matei Balș” Institute.