"94 killed in fire at high-tech Indian hospital; Doctors fled to safety, leaving patients behind" December 10, 2011|By Hari Kumar and Lydia Polgreen, New York Times
NEW DELHI - When the smoke cleared, 94 people were dead, scores more were injured, and a nation was left asking: Is nowhere, even an expensive, privately run hospital designed for the country’s upwardly mobile classes, safe from the disaster that seems to lurk on every railway line, highway on-ramp, and festival ground?
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The doctors on duty fled the hospital almost immediately, leaving patients stuck in their wards and at the mercy of the billowing black smoke, witnesses and patients told reporters. Local people who tried to get inside the hospital to help rescue patients said they were turned away by security guards who assured them it was only a small kitchen fire.
Hospital officials were slow to call the fire department, and then firetrucks were slow to arrive, hospital officials said.
It took firefighters more than 12 hours to subdue the blaze, fire department officials said. The hospital’s fire detection and suppression system did not function, fire department officials said.
Six senior hospital officials were charged with culpable homicide in connection with the fire, according to government officials. The blaze is sure to raise fresh questions about safety in India’s booming private hospital business, which, like much else in India, is poorly regulated.
Firhad Hakim, West Bengal state’s minister of urban development, said the hospital was storing diesel and motor oil in the basement....
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