Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) Mayor Atiqul Islam has said eight of the total 11 fire extinguishers in the isolation room of United Hospital expired a month ago.
On Wednesday, a fire broke out at the Coronavirus Isolation Unit, setup on the badminton court beside the hospital’s main building, which left five patients dead.
Atiqul made the statement after visiting the hospital around 11am on Thursday.
He said: “If the hospital had a firefighting team and conducted fire drills in their Coronavirus Isolation Unit, such an incident would not have happened."
“However, they (hospital authority) claimed to have a firefighting team who could not enter the room in fear of the coronavirus infection, as there were Covid-19 patients in the room.”
The mayor also said: “No one was in charge of operating the fire hydrant or any other responsibility, no one had specified roles in case of a fire incident."
“An investigation is underway to find out whether anyone was responsible or was there any negligence in the fire incident.”
“If the investigation shows any negligence, the government should take action against those responsible,” he added.
The fire service formed a four-member probe body, headed by its Deputy Director (Dhaka) Debasis Bardhan, to investigate the incident.
Three of the five victims were Covid-19 positive while the rest two were found to be negative. None of the family members of the five deceased filed any complaints.
United Hospital authority filed an unnatural death (UD) case over the fire incident with Gulshan police station around 4:30am on Thursday.
Atiqul said: “People get admitted to hospital for recovering and it is unfortunate they had to die here in a fire incident,” he added.
He requested all hospitals to give importance to their fire safety.