Fire
On Wednesday, January 2, 2008 just before 1:30pm, a fire broke out in a plant room on the top floor of the hospital, which led to the evacuation of all patients and staff from the unit. The entire roof of the Chelsea Wing of the hospital was burned through, and the top floor was also affected. Five operating theatres and at least two wards were put out of action. The smoke was visible for miles around.
In addition to the evacuation of 200 staff and outpatients, 79 inpatients - 37 of them bedded - were moved to a local church and the neighbouring Royal Brompton Hospital, some being carried on hospital mattresses by a team of emergency services and doctors. Two patients were still undergoing surgery in the operating theatres in the basement and had to be evacuated. Later, full-care was resumed by RM medical staff who re-assembled on the wards of The Royal Brompton.
A hospital official said that damage was less than thought and BBC reports the day after the fire stated that out-patients would be seen on the following Monday and that research documentation had not been lost.
When the fire was at its peak, 125 firefighters and 16 ambulances were in attendance. Two members of staff suffered slight smoke inhalation but there were no other casualties or injuries. They were taken to the nearby Chelsea and Westminster Hospital A&E department.
Monday 7 January saw the reopening of its outpatients department and radiotherapy unit. Later that week, inpatients were welcomed back to The Royal Marsden from their temporary home at The Royal Brompton.
Read more about this topic: The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust
Famous quotes containing the word fire:
“Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“his lips meet mine, and a flood
Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown
Against him, die and find death good.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a case like the present.”
—William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879)