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Subscribe to RSSOne patient was killed and three others suffered slight injuries in a fire at Durham Regional Hospital in central North Carolina early Tuesday.
Firefighters were called to a report of an explosion on the sixth floor of the hospital around 2:15 a.m., Durham Fire Department spokeswoman Sierra Jackson said. The firefighters discovered there had been no explosion and the fire had been extinguished by the hospital sprinkler system.
The cause of the fire was still under investigation, Jackson said later Tuesday morning.
Hospital officials were still investigating exactly where the fire occurred and how, said Katie Galbraith, hospital chief of operations.
The hospital was operating normally several hours later.
The sixth floor of Durham Regional is a unit operated by Select Specialty Hospitals, a company that provides care for critical and complex cases that require more attention than conventional patients, the Raleigh News and Observer newspaper reported. Other patients in the 30-bed unit were moved to other parts of the hospital, which is owned by Duke University. The company did not immediately return calls for comment.
Some other patients were moved because of flooding caused by the sprinklers.
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"They are safe and they are being well cared for," Galbraith said.
The three slightly injured patients, who had been on ventilators before the fire, were taken to the emergency room to be checked for smoke inhalation and then sent to the intensive care unit.
The names of the fatality and those injured were not immediately released.
Galbraith said the hospital staff practices for just such emergencies.
"Our focus is on making sure people are safe," she said. "They did exactly what they're trained to do."
Durham Regional is a 369-bed acute care hospital.
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NBC News' Jim Gold contributed to this report.
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Leave a Comment:
Let me guess...Someone was smoking while on oxygen!
Nope. This happened during a code, when they were using a defibrillator. No smoking involved. Also, since the patient that died was already in cardiac arrest, the fire probably had very little to do with it. Just the fact that a patient in cardiac arrest died at the same time that there was a fire - small and quickly extinguished - was enough to make this headline news. It does make for a rather dramatic story, though, doesn't it?
No excuse for a fire in a hospital. The Environment of Care person should be fired.
I disagree. What if it was intentional, or what if the builder cut corners on the electrial to pad their bottom line. What if someone just thought is was a brilliant idea to create an open flame near an oxygen line? One cannot plan for every contigency where stupidity, greed and malice maybe present.
No investigation and you are already firing someone??? We are sure quick to judge in the USA...
No facts, but a PhD is forming the lynch mob...
Managed care at it's finest. Wires-Biomeds problem......O2 and open flame.......Safety Officer. The process failed somewhere and someone caused the death of this patient through negligence. The only way it's not the fault of the facility, is if they spontaneously combusted or the person was intentionally set on fire. If it was hot enough for the sprinklers, then that was a very hot fire that was left unnoticed.
Good Lord not sure you know what managed care even is. You really need to open your eyes and see what caused it before you start flapping that hole under your nose. I have worked in Hospital most of my life and many things cause fires most you never hear about. The patient could have been smoking or created another spark of some kind. COuld have been some kind of malfunction in a piece of equipment due to improper production of that equipment. There could be 100 reasons. So before you start thowing blame see wht happened unless you are an ambulance chasing attorney of some kind and looking for a way to make a buck
So glad more people weren't hurt.
In your case.. PhD stands for Piled High and Deep...
Is that all you got?
It's all they need...
Let an investigation take place first. You sound silly as judge, jury, and executioner - free of information and facts.
It may turn out you are correct, but to make that assumption immediately - free of facts - does not seen logical.
Why take them to the emergency room if they were already in the hospital? Weren't they capable of checking them out where they were or did they just want to charge them for an emergency room visit as well?
Well since there was just a FIRE where the people were, I'm guessing that no, they could not just check them out there.
Because there are doctors/nurses on staff in the ER to triage patients like this.
Calm down, phd. Let them investigate. Anything from a sneaking smoker to a spark from a piece of machinery. This type of unit is likely a Tertiary Care Unit that is full of respirators,dialyisizers, and suction, feeding and IV pumps.
Eaxctly
Anyone remember Raleigh cigarettes ?
Not the guy that was sneaking one at 2 a.m.
A patient probably found out his ins co canceled him right before surgery. Obama would stop that, but the d a's that vote for the outsourcer don't care, they think that's just FINE
I was a patient for a heart procedure (angioplasty) that required an overnight in that hospital 10 years ago. In the morning when they came to remove the monitor that they put on me to tell them how my heart was doing while I slept, they discovered that there were no batteries in the unit. I wonder what they were watching all night?
Five years ago I went in the same hospital for a test to see if there was any blockage in my carotid arteries. While the guy was doing the test he took three personal calls on his cell phone and left to get a bottle of water while he was doing the test.
I'm never going back in there.