Durban - Two patients had to be airlifted from Port Shepstone Regional Hospital as firefighters battled for four hours on Monday to put out a fire that broke out in the hospital’s IT server room.
The fire gutted computers and other equipment in the server room, raising fears that crucial information may have been wiped out.
Spokesperson for the Ray Nkonyeni municipality, Simon April, said the fire did not spread to the wards, but some patients had to be evacuated due to the smoke.
“Because the server room is underground directly beneath the J ward and the intensive care unit, that section was affected by smoke.”
The health department said the block where the fire started housed the paediatric ward and the critical care and intensive care units.
April said 208 patients had to evacuated. Some were moved to other wards while others had to be transported to a nearby hospital.
“Our fire department received a call at about 9.05am. We were there by 9.08am and managed to put out the fire by 1.30pm,” he said
Sam Mkhwanazi, spokesperson for the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health, said four patients who were in high and intensive care units had to be transported to other hospitals.
Two of them were airlifted to hospitals in Durban, one by helicopter and the other by a fixed-wing aircraft.
Two other patients were transported by road, he said.
Seven patients who were in the general wards were transported to Murchison provincial hospital between Port Sheptone and Oribi Gorge, and the GJ Crookes hospital in Scottburgh.
He said the cause of the fire was unknown and the extent of the damage had yet to be fully established, adding that the department would only have this information once the investigation had been concluded.
April said the hospital might have lost data stored on servers.
“The real damage is in the server room where computers were damaged. Considering that the server room is the central point where the information is kept, it is possible that information was lost, unless they have some back-up system.”
Meanwhile, at the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital in Phoenix, Durban, patients had to be evacuated from some of the maternity wards on Monday.
Mkhwanazi said only wards 5 and 6 had been affected. He did not have information on the cause of the fire.
Jay Kanniappen, the division commander of the northern region’s fire stations, said firefighters responded to a call at about 1.30pm and took 10 minutes to extinguish the fire. He said the fire had started at the ceiling void in the maternity wards.
“It seems like they were doing hot-work (welding or cutting work) and a wooden beam caught fire.”
He said no one had been affected by smoke, and patients were moved to other wards. The wooden beams and the cladding in the ceiling were damaged.
By last night Port Sheptone Hospital was said to be functioning again, albeit not fully.