Fire hose malfunctioned during hospital fire

A timeline and another internal email reveal some fire-suppression equipment malfunctioned during a May fire at the Waterford Hospital in St. John’s, a blaze dubbed by one Eastern Health official as “catastrophic.”

The supper-hour, Saturday, May 28, fire caused significant damage to the facility, metro’s oldest hospital, a sprawling structure on Waterford Bridge Road that is to be replaced with a new mental-health and addictions hospital at the Health Sciences Centre.

One email — obtained by Saltwire Network through provincial access to information legislation — was written to some personnel in the wake of a meeting about the fire and reveals, “Staff did not know there was a fire extinguisher on the unit. On some other units, the fire extinguishers are in the glass cabinets. So staff tried to put the fire out by filling garbage buckets with water from the bathroom sink,” said the email from Megan Tucker, mentalhealth and addictions, acute care and tertiary services site lead for the Waterford Hospital.

Apparently, a fire hose on the unit malfunctioned. The fire on Unit W3A was quite large at that point, according to the access response documents.

That same email noted a person whose name was redacted “asked if they could have done anything differently to make the hose work.”

That is also revealed in an internal timeline compiled by Eastern Health after the fire: “17:27 — Nursing staff unsuccessfully attempt to get unit hose to the fire. Fire extinguishers were not used.”

That was two minutes after the Code Red sounded and the fire department had been alerted.

The sprinklers activated, but according to one email, it’s not known when that occurred.

STAFF PRAISED

Four minutes after the Code Red, nurses and security staff had successfully evacuated all patients and staff from the unit.

Staff were heavily praised for their quick actions.

“I just wanted to once again say thank you for your leadership over the past several days,” Glenda Webber, interim executive director of correctional health and mental health and addictions, wrote in an email. “It gives me great pride to work with so many dedicated leaders who always put patients first. The response was immediate, effective and very collaborative. Thank you all so much for all you do, but especially over the past few days! It certainly seems that we all have way too much experience in crisis management over the past few years, but despite that, it is a good feeling to know that whatever we face as a program, we have the right people in place to respond and keeping us moving forward.”

All patients were safe and there were no reported injuries — 16 were on the unit at the time of the fire. Additionally, four other patients were affected in another unit due to water and smoke danger.

“Good morning, the Mental Health and Addictions Program had a catastrophic fire yesterday, and I’m not sure if everyone is aware. There was a fire on one of our acute care units last night, resulting in the closure of the entire west block of our building,” Tucker wrote to a number of managers on May 29.

“We have an urgent need to facilitate movement of patients out of this facility if they are not acute care, as we have rapidly decreased our beds, and no longer have physical space to hold community emergencies. This is my SOS.”

A few hours after it happened, the fire was described as having a “monumental impact” on patients, and even moreso on staff.

Psychological support and mobile crisis were engaged.

There was a psychological debrief for staff as a result of the fire.