Firefighters who responded to the weekend blaze at the Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital say they could have acted more swiftly had the fire hydrant system been fully operational. The fire has again put the spotlight on poor health and safety controls and non-compliance at state buildings.
In 2018, three firefighters were killed in an inferno at the Bank of Lisbon.
The safety compliance rate stood at a dismal 21%.
Firefighters from Johannesburg’s EMS say they discovered a damaged fire hydrant when responding to the Charlotte Maxeke hospital blaze on Friday.
Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital temporarily closed following fire:
Spokesperson, Synock Matobako, says firefighters had to shuttle back and forth to get water from a working fire hydrant that was located outside the hospital.
This caused delays in their response time in extinguishing the blaze.
“Because of that, because now we were doing water shuttling. The time that we went out to get water from another source, the fire re-ignited and moved on. But had we stayed at one place and not moving to get water we would have dealt with the situation in a better way,” Matobako says.
In 2018, three firefighters died while fighting a blaze at the now demolished Bank of Lisbon building in central Johannesburg. The building housed the Gauteng Health Department offices.
Matobako says at the time they also discovered the firefighting equipment inside the building had no water.
“Yes, those are the challenges. We seem to be finding a trend; it is like a trend that is happening with most of the buildings that we respond to.”
Safety compliance
In terms of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, buildings must be inspected regularly to ensure safety compliance. In this case, it’s the Gauteng government and specifically the provincial Infrastructure Development Department that is responsible for inspections.
Health and Safety practitioner, Leon Smit, says there needs to be a health and safety management system.
“You need to, with your health and safety management system, ensure that certain functions such as inspecting fire-hydrants. Does the company have firefighters, are those firefighters trained? Are those firefighters looking at the fire hydrants and inspecting them once a month? Fire hoses, are they tested and functioning yearly?”
Health workers union, Nehawu, says it has complained to government about the collapse of health and safety committees within hospitals.
Nehawu president, Mzwandile Makwayiba, says had government listened, the fire at Charlotte Maxeke hospital could have been avoided.
“The inspection in the department of health, the inspection in government buildings must be completed. The absence of water, the ability of water extinguishing fire that is supposed to be immediately activated when there is a fire in the building; we have raised all those things. It is just that we have a government which is not prepared to listen,” says Makwayiba.
Safety audit of hospitals
Gauteng DA Health spokesperson, Jack Bloom, says a few years ago, the Labour Department inspected several Gauteng hospitals and not a single one passed the safety audit.
“We’ve had four hospitals on fire in the last six-years. We also had the terrible fire at the Bank of Lisbon building and the premier of Gauteng has still not released the report on the causes of the fire at the Bank of Lisbon building. I think we need to have accountability and ensure all our hospitals are safe.”
Gauteng premier David Makhura says the Infrastructure Department is currently conducting a conditional assessment of all hospitals in the province.
It will establish what maintenance challenges exist. He says he is expecting a report soon into the cause of the fire at the Charlotte Maxeke hospital.
“Remember there were several bodies and government departments that were investigating the Bank of Lisbon report. One thing is to ensure all those reports are consolidated into one report,” Makhura says.
However, he again could not say when the final report will be made public.
Charlotte Maxeke Hospital fire brings safety of government buildings back to the spotlight:
