Some top hospitals in town were seen reducing basement clutter on Sunday, as much for the sake of safety as in anticipation of a sudden fire inspection in the wake of the AMRI tragedy.

It isn’t illegal to use the basement of a building for any purpose as long as the stipulated safeguards are in place, though much of the excess material that tumbled out of the underground closets of the hospitals appeared to be inflammable. The list ranged from unused furniture to stacks of files stashed into cartons.

If the reputable hospitals were being careful, a couple of nursing homes appeared nonchalant. Metro did a round of the city’s health care circuit to find out who had learnt a lesson from the avoidable tragedy at AMRI Hospitals and who hadn’t.

Where: Belle Vue Clinic, Loudon Street

When: 3.45pm

What we saw: Workers were found removing discarded furniture from the basement and loading them on one of the three vans parked behind the main building.

The removed items included gas cylinders, heaps of plywood, broken doors, medicine cartons, computer monitors and TVs, broken furniture, mattresses and bed sheets. Plywood was stacked outside the cafeteria on the ground floor, which shares the path to the basement staircase.

Files and bundles of bed sheets were shifted out of the hospital premises on handcarts.

P. Tondon, the CEO of Belle Vue Clinic, admitted that the clean-up was triggered by the tragedy at AMRI.

“The AMRI incident has opened our eyes. Material left behind by the developer who built our second building were lying inside the basement for quite some time. I called up the owner of the firm after Friday’s incident and asked him to remove everything, but he did not do it. So I asked our staff to remove them today.”

Where: Bhagirathi Neotia Woman and Child Care Centre, Rawdon Street

When: 2.45pm

What we saw: The hospital has two basements. The upper basement houses the Genomee fertility clinic that comprises three consulting rooms, a laboratory, an ultrasound unit, a female recovery room, the maintenance department, office space, an operation theatre and a lounge for visitors.

A 60-strong team of employees work in that section.

The lower basement houses the entire administrative department, which usually functions with skeletal staff on a weekend. On Sunday, the department was buzzing with employees, many of them engaged in removing documents, computers, televisions, furniture and other office stationary out of the block. Some hired workers were seen moving furniture out of some rooms.

“We are expecting an inspection,” an employee said, requesting anonymity.

The director of Bhagirathi Neotia Woman and Child Care Centre, P.L. Mehta, said the hospital had nothing to fear, having applied for and received “all the necessary permissions”.

So was Sunday’s basement cleaning a routine exercise? “I don’t know if anything was shifted out of the facilities in our basement on Sunday,” he told Metro.

Where: Calcutta Mercy Hospital, Park Street

When: 3.10pm

What we saw: The basement houses the pharmacy, kitchen, personnel department, a portion of the administrative department and a storeroom.

On Sunday afternoon, a Matador was parked on the hospital premises to carry away discarded computer monitors, televisions, wooden tables, broken chairs and sheets of plywood that workers had brought out of the storeroom.

“Our bosses have asked us to rid the basement of trash by evening. They say that police will inspect this hospital on Monday,” a Group D employee said, hours before word came that the authorities had decided to temporarily suspend services except for those already undergoing treatment there.

A spokesperson for the hospital cited an internal problem for the decision not to take in new patients. “We had been trying to clear the basement for a long time. Today, when we were removing items from the kitchen, union members prevented us from doing so and even assaulted some officials.”

Union members alleged that the kitchen at the basement had been stashed with highly inflammable goods for years. “We wanted the fire department to come for an inspection and find out how fire-prone the basement is. That is why we tried to prevent this sudden attempt to make everything look tidy,” a union leader said.

Where: Divine Nursing Home, Beleghata

When: 12.50pm

What we saw: The windows of the four-storey hospital are not only sealed but also have grilles, almost ruling them out as possible escape routes in the event of a fire.

A fire department official said grilles on windows and balconies in hospitals were a no-no. “If a blaze like the one at AMRI Hospitals in Dhakuria were to occur here, how would we rescue those inside? We would need to use gas-cutters, which isn’t possible in a fire situation,” he said.

Divine is a popular nursing home in the Phoolbagan-Beleghata-Kankurgachhi-Salt Lake belt. The nursing home was set up in 1986, while its paediatric unit — Divine Child Care — was built five years ago.

Divine Nursing Home and Divine Child Care, on opposite sides of the road, don’t have emergency exits and use one entrance each. Plastic packets containing waste are dumped next to the washrooms on the ground floor. Look up and you find loose electric wiring hanging precariously.

A doctor previously attached to the nursing home said neither unit had staff trained to handle fire emergencies. “The guards and male attendants would need to use the fire extinguishers and evacuate trapped people in an emergency,” he said.

Where: Daffodil Nursing Home, Lake Town

When: 3.30pm

What we saw: The rear part of the ground floor resembles what the basement of AMRI Hospitals in Dhakuria would have looked like before Friday’s blaze. The approximately 1,000sq ft space is used to stack unused chairs, broken doors and doorframes, and old equipment.

A source in the nursing home said the building did not have even basic equipment like water hydrants, sprinklers and fire alarms. “The stairs are not more than five feet wide. The hospital is in a building designed to be a residence. The general wards don’t even have fire extinguishers,” he said.