JEDDAH, 23 June — The main building of the Soliman Fakeeh Pediatric Hospital was evacuated yesterday morning as a fire in a generator on the sixth floor filled the building with acrid smoke.
The alarm was raised at about 9.30 a.m. and patients and staff were immediately evacuated from the VIP suites and children’s wards on the sixth floor. Shortly afterward the whole building was cleared. According to staff in the suites, the fire reached the fifth floor before it was eventually controlled.
Patients were temporarily relocated in an adjacent building.
The fire services attended the scene and were supported by a rescue helicopter which patrolled the area over the hospital as a safety precaution.
Fire officers said that there were no injuries, but a number of staff were in distress from smoke inhalation.
A senior administrator for the hospital told this reporter that the cause, yet to be confirmed by investigators, was a generator on the sixth floor that overheated when circuitry failed. This caused the power to the building to be cut, but the generator continued to produce power. This caused a buildup of heat that set the insulation around the pipe-work and support structure of the generator to overheat and produce smoke.
According to two nurses in the vicinity, fire broke out shortly afterward.
Dr. Nazer Fakeeh, deputy director general of the hospital, said, "The evacuation procedures we have in place for emergencies worked exactly as they were designed to. There were no injuries and we had the whole situation under control very quickly."
By 11.30, the rescue services had set up powerful fans inside the building to ventilate the remaining fumes.
