Kolkata Hospital Fire Kills 73 || kolkata hospital fire help line numbers!!!!!!!!

NEW DELHI--A fire early Friday in a hospital in Kolkata, in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, killed at least 73 people by asphyxiation, police and hospital officials said.Of the dead, 70 were patients and three were nurses, said Satyabrata Upadhyay, senior vice president at AMRI Hospitals, where the fire broke out.

The hospital, a joint venture between two Kolkata-based business groups, Emami Group and Shrachi Group, and the West Bengal government said a "sudden fire was detected in the basement" of an annex around 3.30 a.m. It said the hospital acted promptly to contain the fire but "thick smoke emanating from the fire became a severe hindrance to the rescue operation."

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Bikas Das/Associated Press

Kolkata police said 60 patients were rescued and shifted to other parts of the same hospital and some were transferred to other city hospitals. The annex where the fire started was used for storing cylinders of chemical gases and other medical equipment. Police said the West Bengal government has cancelled the hospital's license following the incident. Police also said government forensic and disaster response teams arrived at the site Friday afternoon to check for any radioactive leakages or evidence of sabotage.

G.K. Bhattacharya, director of the West Bengal government's fire department, said that by Friday afternoon the rescue operation was over. He said the fire brigade was dispatched to the site after receiving a call from the hospital at 4 a.m. He said aerial ladders were used to pull out the patients through windows. He denied Indian media reports that firefighters arrived at the site two hours later.

Many victims' relatives were shown Friday on Indian news channels blaming the hospital for being unhelpful and negligent.

The Associated Press quoted Subrata Mukherjee, state minister for public health engineering, saying: ``It was horrifying that the hospital authorities did not make any effort to rescue trapped patients" and "senior hospital authorities ran away after the fire broke out.''

Dr. Upadhyay, the hospital official, denied that officials fled, saying the entire hospital staff worked together with the rescue team and local residents to save the patients. But the AP also reported that six hospital officials had been charged with culpable homicide.

A statement from the hospital said it will give 500,000 rupees (about $9,500) each to the families of the dead and provide free treatment to the affected patients.

Fire caused by exploding gas cylinders, electric short-circuits, and fire-arms, among other causes, accounts for about 7% of accidental deaths in India every year, according to National Crime Records Bureau, a federal government body.
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