I was by the bedside of my mother-in-law who was undergoing treatment in the gastro-surgery ward on the second floor of Sum Hospital last evening. It was around 7.30pm and I went out to have some tea at an outlet outside the campus. As I entered the gate, I could smell smoke from the building.

A thin line of smoke was gradually coming out from behind the building. But I thought it was from some nearby areas and asked a security guy standing nearby where the smoke was coming from. He told me that someone might be burning garbage outside the campus.

After a while, I noticed that people around me were also trying to find out the source of the smoke. Some ran to the building looking for the source of the smell. The security person standing close to me also rushed to the spot.

Soon, people were seen pelting the glass panes with stones. A piece of glass broke and dark smoke started billowing from the opening. People started running in haste from the spot and we could sense that the fire had broken out in the hospital itself. I took the stairs and ran to the ward, which was by then already full of smoke. I took a wheelchair lying nearby and rescued my mother-in-law with the help of another relative. People were already running for their lives and the stairs were full of people. However, we managed to make our way to outdoors.

In the open area, I left my mother-in-law with my relative and returned to building with the wheelchair. It was so crowded by then that one could not reach the second floor anymore. I used the wheelchair to help at least eight critically ill patients lying outdoors.

I also rushed out to the other parts of the building where the fire had spread. But there was utter chaos everywhere. People from inside the hospitals and outside had gathered. Fire tenders and newspersons had already arrived and the crowd was swelling with every passing second.

People were seen searching for their dear ones. Patients were lying on the ground in a miserable state with no attendants around and no clue of what was happening.

Almost everyone who bumped into me was asking me what had happened. Some were asking for the directions to various wards were their kin were admitted.

There were loud wails and there was no one whom they could ask about the safety of their dear ones.

People could be seen rescuing patients from the windows using bedsheets from the higher floors of the hospital.

As panic spread, attendants of patients were seen jumping out of the windows. The police failed to control the crowd. People from nearby areas had also gathered to see what had happened.

Sometime later, I saw some volunteers had formed a human chain to keep the crowd out. At one place, ambulances and other vehicles were lined up to take the patients to different hospitals. The evacuated patients were being carried out in these vehicles one by one.

As the situation was brought under control around 9.30 pm, I went to check where the fire had broken out. The lights had been switched off and only the emergency lights were working. I heard some attendants of the patients in the ICU saying that the fire extinguishers were responsible for the spread of smoke.

"The fire started spreading as soon as the extinguishers were used," said an attendant who lost his relative to the mishap.

From there, I returned to the gastro-surgery ward on the second floor from where I collected all the medical records of the patients, including the medical papers of my mother-in-law, as we had already spent around Rs 20,000 for various tests. We waited downstairs and were taken to a different part of the building around 1am.

HOSPITAL FIRE: GRIEF, REGRET, ANGER SPILL OVER

♦ The staff did not allow me to enter the ICU and bring my mother-in-law, who subsequently died
Arjun Patro, attendant
♦ The hospital did not do anything to rescue critically-ill patients and I lost my cousin
Mohammad Arif, attendant
♦ I jumped from the second floor and broke the glass window pane, but could not save my father
Jyoti Ranjan Das, attendant
♦ The life of my brother could have been saved had the hospital promptly evacuated the patients 
Bibhuti Bhusan Sahoo, attendant
♦ When the fire broke out, I managed to get out but my friend Padmini could not
Saraswati Dehury, attendant
♦ No one was there to rescue my cousin Nimai Charan Naik to a safer place
Lala Lajpat Rai, attendant

THE DECEASED

♦ P Kalyani Patra (74), Ganjam
♦ Md Hasnai (30), Bhubaneswar
♦ Laxman Baral (60), Banapur, Khurda
♦ Rajani Patra (45) Banapur, Khurda
♦ Sulochana Parida (86), Raghunathpur, Khurda
♦ Bhagyadhar Behera (18), Dhenkanal
♦ Latika Das (86), Bhubaneswar
♦ Prasanna Kumar Tripathy (61), Bolagada, 

Khurda
♦ Manaswini Sarangi (56), Jankia, Khurda
♦ Md Zahur Hussain (78), Keranga, Khurda
♦ Ashok Kumar Sahoo (45), Puri
♦ Padmini Dehury (29), Keonjhar
♦ Tribeni Nayak (55), Ganjam
♦ Minai Charan Nayak (70), Bhubnaeswar
♦ Jogendra Kumar Das (54), Begunia, Khurda
♦ Nagendra Sur (68), Balasore
♦ Lingaraj Rout (62), Ganjam
♦ Sailabala Sasmal (58), Jagatsinghpur
♦ Sukanti Sahu (40), Jatani, Khurda
♦ Harihar Malla (75), Khandapada

THE INJURED 

Hospital admitted to    Number of patients
♦ Capital Hospital            5
♦ SCB hospital                6
♦ Neelachal Hospital       13
♦ AMRI Hospitals            36
♦ KIIMS Medical College  14
♦ AIIMS                         30

The author was attending to a patient when the fire struck