The corridor through which patients and relatives ran for safety on Saturday night. (Amit Datta)

NASIR MONDAL admitted his five-year-old son Salman to the paediatric ward of SSKM Hospital on Thursday evening after the boy fell down from the loft in their house at Nodakhali in South 24-Parganas. Because of the space crunch in the ward, Salman was allotted a bed in the corridor, a few feet away from the antechamber where a fire broke out in an air-conditioner on Saturday night. Nasir had been spending the nights on the staircase of the hospital and his wife on the floor near Salman’s bed. On Saturday night, Nasir had just finished dinner and made himself comfortable at his “usual spot” on the staircase when the first cry from the paediatric ward reached his ears. Here’s what happened after that, in his own words.

I was chatting with relatives of other patients when we heard screams for help from the Alex Ward. I ran up the staircase towards the corridor where my son was sleeping with his mother. Midway, I ran into a wall of thick black smoke. As the visibility dropped, the cries for help became almost deafening.

In the dark, my head hit something, possibly a person trying to squeeze through the gate at the end of the corridor. I tried my best but could not push my way in with so many people scrambling to come out of the ward.

Why is everyone trying to rush out through this exit and not using the one at the other end of the corridor, I thought.

It seemed that entering the corridor through the other end was a better idea. I soon learnt why it wasn’t.

A bed was blocking the other exit and people were trying to climb over it in a desperate bid to leave the ward. Most of these people were medical staff.

Children and their mothers could not climb over the bed and were thus dashing to the other exit, choking it. With every passing second, smoke was filling the corridor.

I managed to push my way into the corridor and tried to grope ahead. I hurt my legs several times by running into beds and the discarded furniture that were strewn around. I had spent two days at the hospital without realising how difficult it was to walk through the cramped corridor.

When I managed to reach my son’s bed, I saw my wife crying and trying to wake up our son in vain. Because of his head injury, doctors had been administering sedatives so that he did not feel the pain much.

There was no doctor or nurse in sight to help us. I lifted my son and ran towards the open door. A bottleneck had formed there with people trying desperately to escape. I pushed and shoved my way through.

The stairs were dimly lit and many fell after missing steps. Outside the building, I could not spot my wife for a few minutes. I breathed a sigh of relief only when I saw her emerging through the gate.