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£1m bill for Ormond St blaze
Sophie Goodchild6 Oct 2008
London's Great Ormond Street Hospital faces a £1million repair bill for last week's fire and blast damage, the Standard can reveal today.
These exclusive pictures show for the first time the devastation caused to the country's top children's hospital by an exploding cylinder which wrecked the cardiac wing.
The blast on the hospital's fifth floor was so powerful it reduced an entire day ward to rubble.
Windows were blown out sending shards of glass over the rooftops below. Doors were forced off their hinges. Quick-thinking nurses and doctors had just minutes to evacuate all four children on Ladybird ward before the explosion ripped through the room next door.
They included a seriously ill child waiting for a heart transplant who had to be wheeled to safety.
Other patients had only just been anesthetised and had to be woken up then carried down fire escapes.
London Fire Brigade is still investigating the exact cause of the incident which also caused minor damage to levels three and four.
But it is believed a fire in the day ward, which was empty at the time, triggered the fire alarms at around 8.30am. Staff had already evacuated 300 people including 23 patients from the building by the time 35firefighters and six engines arrived.
Seven minutes later the heat of the blaze caused a gas or oxygen cylinder used by patients to erupt, injuring the four firefighters who had been sent to tackle the fire.
They suffered minor injuries and had to be treated in hospitalThe blaze was under control just before 10am and the hospital reopened soon after.
Some parents of patients mistakenly believed Great Ormond Street had been hit by a bomb attack. For many, the extensive nature of the blast is only now sinking in.
All services are running normally but early estimates of the damage put the repair bill at £1 million. Insurers should meet the cost but the hospital still needs vital cash to update cramped, outdated facilities including the cardiac wing.
Prime Minster Gordon Brown and shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley both telephoned the hospital's chief executive Dr Jane Collins personally to offer their support.
Dr Collins said staff had been "heroic" in the calm and quick way they had responded.
She said: "The patients and children who were on the ward at the time were very lucky. There was not much time to get them out and I'm just really thankful the staff did all the right things. From porters to nursing staff, this was such a team effort. It was a tremendous performance."
She said she was on her way to work when she saw the fire engines racing up the road. "I just thought 'I hope that's not us' because there were so many engines. Fire alarms are always going off because of burned toast."
THE STAFF WERE 'AMAZING'
ANNA Glover's 18-month-old daughter Georgia was among 40 children evacuated from Great Ormond Street.
Georgia was on Ladybird ward on the fifth floor recovering from surgery to her oesophagus when fire broke out metres away last Monday.
Mrs Glover, a public relations executive, said nurses battled on with Georgia's care despite the drama. Mrs Glover, 39, from Wendover, in Bucks, said: "The alarm started going off and the nurses went to find out what was going on. Then the surgeon came in and told everyone they had to get out. Georgina was in her cot so we picked her up with her morphine feed still attached and put her in her pushchair." She said everyone was very calm and the staff were "amazing".
