Smokey Fire Causes Chaos At Mt. Sinai Med Center
Blaze Starts In Mechanical Room, Spreads To 1st Floor ER
And Grows To 3 Alarms As Patients Evacuate
WCBS-TV 1/22/09
A fire at a major
hospital sent smoke pouring through an
emergency room Wednesday, forcing
hundreds of patients to move across the
sprawling complex.
There were no reports of injuries among
patients, but six firefighters were
hurt.
The fire began shortly before 6:30 p.m.
in a second-floor mechanical room at the
Mount Sinai Medical Center and spread to
a first-floor emergency room, Fire
Department of New York spokesman Frank
Dwyer said. The fire was confined to the
mechanical room; its cause was unknown.
Flames in the Manhattan building were
visible from the adjacent Madison
Avenue, said Janet Montero, a manager at
the nearby One Fish Two Fish restaurant.
Dwyer said patients were removed from
the east wings to the west wings of the
12-story hospital, which has nearly
1,200 beds, as firefighters searched the
building. The patients had been on the
third through 11th floors.
Hospital representatives did not
immediately return telephone calls
seeking comment.
Jesus Ochoa, 43, a patient awaiting a
surgical procedure Friday, was spending
time with his family in his eighth-floor
room when an alarm went off, said his
daughter, Jessica Ochoa.
"Then the smoke comes," she said. "The
smell was strong, like something was
burning."
Four to five minutes later, smoke was
everywhere, and "we couldn't breathe,"
she said.
A nurse initially told the family
members it was safer to stay in the room
than to leave, but a hospital staffer
then instructed them to put wet towels
across their faces and led them to the
ground floor of a nearby building,
Jessica Ochoa said. She said she saw one
nurse faint and another sob during a
brisk but orderly evacuation.
Wrapped in a blanket and a hospital gown
in a lobby more than two hours later,
Jesus Ochoa said, "I want to go back. I
want to do my surgery."
Patients, employees and visitors milled
in the hospital's lobbies, looking for
information.
Visitor Ellen Marakowitz still had none
after about an hour of circling through
the hospital's various entrances, trying
to ascertain the whereabouts of her
88-year-old mother, Helen Marakowitz,
who was hospitalized with a broken hip
and pneumonia. Her mother's aide had
called to say there was a fire, smoke
had spread to the area of her mother's
eighth-floor room and the two were being
moved.
Marakowitz, who rushed to the hospital
from her Manhattan home, said she had
spoken to a hospital employee but hadn't
located her mother.
"I'm sure she's fine, but it would be
nice to know where she is," Marakowitz
said. "My mother's 88, and the aide is
terrified, so I'm not just going to
ignore them."
Mount Sinai was founded in downtown
Manhattan in 1852. It has been in its
present spot, occupying four square
blocks on the Upper East Side, since
1904.
related...
Firefighters Knock Down Blaze At Mt. Sinai Hospital WNBC-TV 1/22/09
Fire Breaks Out At Mt. Sinai Hospital NY1 News 1/21/09
Three-Alarm Fire At Mt. Sinai Hospital WABC-TV 1/22/09
Fire At Mt. Sinai Hospital MyFoxNY 1/22/09
Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital Catches Fire Newsday 1/22/09
600 Evacuated Following Fire At Mount Sinai Medical Center NY Daily News 1/22/09
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