A DISCARDED unextinguished cigarette was the ‘likely’ cause of Wednesday’s fire that prompted the evacuation of Cartagena’s Santa Lucia hospital.
Murcia’s Emergencies Minister, Marcos Ortuño, told journalists that a cigarette on a rooftop terrace was behind the blaze in block five of the complex.
Nobody was injured but some people were treated for smoke inhalation.
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Ortuño praised the work of Cartagena firefighters who controlled the blaze within half an hour of it breaking out at 7.30am.
He also acknowledged health staff who safely evacuated and relocated over a hundred patients from the section of the hospital hit by the fire.
The Policia Nacional are investigating the cause and have not yet confirmed the minister’s claim.
Despite a ban on smoking on health premises, it was common practice for people to go out for a smoke on the terrace next to the hospital’s cafeteria.
Police experts have carried out a visual inspection of the terrace and taken samples.
Security camera footage is being reviewed to see if it recorded the culprit who police say was negligent rather starting the blaze deliberately.
The La Opinion de Murcia newspaper quoted sources as saying that it would be difficult to find who was responsible.
The fire caused damage to the exterior of block five of the hospital but the flames did not affect any facilities inside.
Normal services were resumed at Santa Lucia on Thursday, though the fire-hit wing remains out of action.
The Murcia government has reiterated that smoking is prohibited within health centre and hospital areas.
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“The Murcia government has reiterated that smoking is prohibited within health centre and hospital areas.” And who enforces it? Very often when I respectfully ask a smoker to move to a different place to carry on smoking I am told to mind my own business! In a perverse way we have created this monster by isolating smokers
so they become concentrated into areas to smoke. That must increase the risk of such incidents ( e.g potentially the recent Hong Kong tower block disaster). I don’t know if this particular case was caused by a discarded cigarette smoked by a patient or by a visitor, but in both cases, as evidenced by the result, it simply is not acceptable. Time to hand out nicotine lozenges?