The power went out around 4.30 am on Sunday morning. Sujatha woke up in the dark, feeling suffocated. “I couldn’t breathe, there was smoke everywhere. I tried to open the door but there was too much smoke and heat coming in from that side so I had to shut it,” she recounts.
Sujatha was one of the 30 patients housed in the COVID Care Centre at Hotel Swarna Palace in Vijayawada, where a deadly fire accident happened on Sunday morning. The hotel was leased by Ramesh Hospitals, a private healthcare facility, and converted into a COVID Care Centre to treat patients with mild symptoms.
Most of the patients had woken up just like Sujatha, alone in their quarantine rooms in the dark morning hours, to the stifling smoke and sounds of panic. A fire had broken out on the ground floor, and quickly spread, as dense smoke slowly filled the rooms. Of the 30 patients and nearly 13 medical staff who went through the ordeal, ten people were killed in the fire.
The three women and seven men who died were among the 30 people who had either contracted COVID-19, or were suffering mild symptoms, and wanted to isolate themselves to keep their families safe before their test results returned. Some of them, like Sujatha, were from Vijayawada. Some had come from nearby towns like Mangalagiri or Jaggayyapeta, to the nearest metropolitan area where they could find a comfortable paid COVID care facility. They were all isolated in their rooms, away from family. Many of them had mild symptoms. Some, like Alla Bakshu, were still awaiting their COVID-19 test result.
“At first, I thought it might be a general power cut and stayed in bed. In ten minutes, I heard sounds of people running and crying for help,” Alla Bakshu recalls. He was on the third floor, as the fire raged in the lower floors. He tried opening the door and immediately realised it was a terrible idea, like Sujatha did around the same time, in a different room on the same floor.
Sujatha tried to open the window so she could breathe. “The window wouldn’t open, no matter how much I tried. I considered breaking it, but after a few more minutes of struggle, it opened.
By then, the fire engines had arrived. The others were also shouting from their windows, calling for help. The room was entirely filled with smoke by then,” she recalls.
Unable to leave their rooms and find solace with the other strangers, many like Sujatha and Alla Bakshu waited alone in fear, for 30 minutes to two hours in some cases, to be rescued.
Siva Prasad Rao, who was also staying on the third floor, had a friend staying on the second floor. For the past couple of days, Prasad had lost his appetite, and also had mild fever. As his friend had opted for the COVID Care Centre, he thought it might be a good idea and got himself admitted. On Sunday morning, soon after the power went off, he got a call from his friend. “He said to me, ‘Prasad, if the power hasn’t immediately returned in such a big hotel, something must be wrong. There is some smell, do you feel it?”
The smell entered the room first, followed by the smoke, which became denser every passing second. Within 15 minutes, the entire room was filled with smoke. “I thought I would be scorched if I stepped outside the door,” he says.
It was still dark outside. Prasad was able to open one of the window glasses, and on the phone, his friend told him to climb out onto the small, cantilever-like slab outside. This was the third floor, and Prasad got out and stepped onto the structure with great difficulty.
The fire department personnel had arrived by then, and they were looking for the people who were trapped, with bright lights turned on. “I kept waving my hands and shouting for help but nobody heard me. There was no light by the window. Luckily, the sun came up soon, and I was able to get their attention by waving my shirt,” he recalls.
But the flames were still raging in the lower floors, and it took about an hour for the firefighters to douse them before rescuing Prasad. While Prasad was already outside, Sujatha says the firemen had to break the windows of her room and help her out onto the slab so she could go down by the ladder.
Sujatha says a few people on the first floor seemed to have jumped from their windows or balconies before the fire turned fatal for them. Hanumantha Rao on the other hand, stayed shut inside his third floor room for two hours and still survived. “I called the hospital authorities, they didn't take my call. I then called my son in Mangalagiri. He advised me to stuff cloth near the door openings to stop the smoke.”
Hanumantha Rao followed his son’s advice and sat on the floor of his room until the fire subsided. He safely walked out of the hotel by the stairs, around 7 am. He is now under isolation at a different hotel in the city, like many of the survivors.
Alla Bakshu on the other hand was too distressed by the incident, and decided to isolate himself at his home in Kanchikacherla. “I am still waiting for my COVID-19 test results. I was supposed to get a CT scan too. They asked me to join the hospital in the morning, but I was scared so I came back home,” he says. Another survivor Srinivasa Rao calls the morning’s incident a near -death experience.
While initial reports suggest a short circuit caused the fire, the exact details are being probed by a committee set up by the state government. The committee was asked on Sunday to furnish a report within 48 hours.
Meanwhile, an FIR filed has been registered based on a complaint from the Mandal Revenue Officer (MRO) of Vijayawada Central, who has blamed the management of Ramesh Hospitals and Hotel Swarna Palace for the incident. The complaint claimed that the hospital and hotel management knew about electrical defects in the hotel beforehand and chose to not conduct repair works. State Health Minister Alla Kali Krishna Srinivas (Nani) told the media that it was 'unfortunate' that the government is being held accountable for the accident.
Watch: Fire accident at COVID Care Centre in Vijayawada