Opinion | Mumbai fire: How a Covid hospital was allowed to be built inside a mall
In a case of gross negligence, a devastating fire swept through a hospital located on the top floor of a four-storey Dreams Mall in Bhandup, Mumbai on Thursday midnight. Eleven bodies were recovered, and according to the municipal corporation, two of them were Covid patients who had already died in hospital, while the remaining nine died of asphyxiation. Seven of them were on ventilators and along with the other two patients, they could not be saved, said Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.
This is a clear case of neglect, maladministration and bungling. The very fact that a 107-bed hospital was running on the top floor of a mall that housed a multiplex, shops, eateries, banquet halls, restaurants and bars, speaks for itself. It is a shining example of administrative incompetence. The Sunrise hospital, declared a Covid hospital, had an OPD, ICU and an CCU. There were ventilators and oxygen for patients inside the hospital, except for one thing. There were no fire safety precautions. Mumbai Fire Services had not given No Objection Certificate for the first and second floors, but had given permission to run a hospital on the top floor.
The fire started from a shop on the first floor and the blaze soon spread to the top floor. There were fire extinguishers in the hospital, but there were no equipment to tackle smoke coming out from the blaze. There was no safe passage for patients to escape.
It is astonishing that a Covid hospital was running on the top floor, and parties were going on inside banquet halls on the second floor. Hundreds of people used to visit the banquet halls, shops and eateries daily. In a nutshell, under one roof there were Corona patients, partygoers and shoppers. This is the height of negligence.
At the time of blaze, there were 78 patients inside the hospital. Twenty two fire engines rushed to the spot to battle the blaze. Even 36 hours after the blaze, on Saturday morning, cooling operations were still on. 67 patients have been shifted to other hospitals.
Mumbai Mayor Kishori Pednekar, who earlier said that she was surprised to find how a hospital was functioning on the top floor of a mall, changed her view, when Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray revealed that the state government had given permission for the Covid hospital because there was shortage of beds and ventilators for Covid patients in Mumbai.
“The hospital was temporarily allowed to treat Covid patients. The hospital’s permit would have expired on March 31, but the blaze occurred before that”, Thackeray said. The BMC, on its part, had issued a notice to the mall for flouting norms in November last year.
As of now, Mumbai Police has filed an FIR against the hospital for causing deaths due to negligence, and the city police chief has promised to take action against the guilty.
Dreams Mall was built in 2009. It has nearly 1,000 shops, two banquet halls and a hospital. The hospital was given conditional occupancy certificate last year due to Covid pandemic. BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis has alleged that the mall was allowed to house a hospital because of corrupt underhand dealings in the BMC.
Fadnavis reminded the government that it had ordered a fire safety audit of all hospitals after 10 children due to a hospital blaze in Bhandara district. Uddhav Thackeray replied that there was indeed a fire safety audit of the hospital, but the blaze had started from a shop on the first floor.
The mall was built by Rakesh Wadhawan’s HDIL in 2009. But since the mall did not make profit, the builder failed to pay charges to BMC. Water and electricity supply to the mall was disconnected. The shop owners approached the National Company Law Tribunal. In 2016, the NCLT appointed an administrator for the mall. By this time, the builder had built a hospital on the top floor of the mall. Initially, the hospital did not get permission, but when the pandemic started, the authorities granted conditional permission from May last year till March 31 this year.
The NCLT-appointed administrator of the mall, Rahul Sahasrabuddhe revealed that he had wrote several letters to BMC and Fire Services pointing out to fire safety deficiencies. The blaze could have been avoided, he said.
Whom will people blame, if a hospital is opened inside a mall, without any fire safety or fire emergency exit? The chief minister may say that the permission was given because of the Covid pandemic, but who will reply to the families of those who died in the blaze, and to the shop owners who lost their properties? The HDIL owner was involved in the PMC bank scam, and its family members were specifically allowed by authorities during Covid pandemic last year, to visit Mahabaleshwar.
So, it is a ripe case for political parties to start blaming one another and CM Uddhav Thackeray will have a tough time in giving logical answers.
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