At 5:55 pm on Monday, a fire broke out in the control room of a lift at Mymensingh Medical College Hospital. The fire was contained within about half an hour. The incident that took place on the staircases of the eight-storey building during those 30 minutes is now the subject of conflicting accounts.
The first reports said six people, including a child, had been killed in a stampede as patients and their relatives rushed downstairs.
By early Tuesday, the divisional administration and hospital authorities had rejected that account. They said they could find no evidence that six people, or anyone, had been killed in a stampede.
But the hospital's own emergency register records four deaths associated with the period after the fire. And relatives of three of those people — Kulsum Akter, Shahajahan Monir and Ramzan Ali — say they were inside the hospital when the fire began and died after becoming caught in the rush on the stairs.
The discrepancy has left two separate questions on how many people died around the time of the fire, and whether any of those deaths were caused by the evacuation. Neither has been conclusively answered so far, Daily Waadaa found out.
Hospital officials have formed a five-member committee and given it three working days to investigate.
The fire itself appears to have been limited. Purna Chandra Mutsuddi, a Fire Service official, told Waadaa that it originated in the control room of Lift No 11 on the roof of the eighth floor of the new building. An electrical short circuit or overheating of the lift's machinery is initially suspected.
Firefighters received the call at 5:55 pm and brought the fire under control by about 6:30.
But smoke spread through parts of the building, and patients and relatives began moving toward the stairs.
Several people who were inside described a chaotic evacuation. At least one staircase was found locked, according to some patients interviewed by Prothom Alo newspaper.
Meanwhile, relatives of Ramzan Ali told Waadaa that four of the building's five staircases were closed. Hospital authorities also have admitted to Waadaa that said some staircases had been kept closed for security reasons.
After the fire and the stampede that followed, word spread quickly through the hospital and surrounding areas that several people had died. By Monday night, reports of six deaths were circulating widely.
But journalists who arrived at the hospital shortly after the fire had not seen six bodies. Hospital officials, police and the Fire Service were also unable to confirm that death toll. At around 11:30 pm, senior officials gathered for a closed-door meeting in the hospital's administrative building.
Among them were Divisional Commissioner SM Humayun Kabir Sarkar, Mymensingh Range DIG Zahidul Hasan, Deputy Commissioner Md. Saifur Rahman, Superintendent of Police Kamrul Hasan, Civil Surgeon Md. Fakhrul Hasan Chowdhury, hospital Director Brigadier Zakir Hossain and Mymensingh-4 lawmaker Abu Wahab Akand Wahid, vice-chairman of the hospital management committee.
Around 1 am, Humayun Kabir told journalists that the reported six stampede deaths were "not true" and "not accurate."
Officials had checked the emergency department, wards and morgue and spoken with doctors, nurses, police and Fire Service personnel, he said adding that they had "found no evidence that six people had been trampled to death."
A list circulating after the fire had itself contained an obvious error that a woman named Jahanara was listed among the dead, but she was alive and receiving treatment at the hospital.
The administration did acknowledge four deaths. Two, officials said, were natural deaths among patients. The causes of the other two remained unclear.
The hospital treats thousands of patients at any given time, the commissioner noted, and deaths from illness occur there every day. He said an investigation would have to determine whether any of the deaths were connected to the fire.
The families of three people give a different account.
Kulsum Akter, 35, had been at the hospital for about 12 days with her 12-year-old son, Swadhin, who was being treated for jaundice in Ward 31. Her 18-year-old daughter, Mim Akter, was also there when the fire began.
Mim told Waadaa that she tried to take her mother and brother downstairs. In the crowd, all three fell. She managed to pull her brother up. When she tried to reach her mother, she said, other people pushed her away.
Her mother called to her once from the crowd. "Oh Mim, won't you hold me?" Mim recalled.. The family eventually got Kulsum downstairs. According to her relatives, she was still breathing when she was rescued and was given oxygen.
She was pronounced dead at the emergency department at around 7:30 pm. Her family took her body home that night. She was buried Tuesday morning.
Kulsum's relatives dispute any suggestion that she arrived at the hospital already dead. She had been staying there with her hospitalized son for nearly two weeks, they said.
Hospital records add another layer to that account. A photograph of a page from the emergency register circulated online after the fire. Mohammad Mainuddin Khan, the hospital's assistant director for administration, confirme that the register was authentic. It lists Kulsum's death at 7:30 pm.
The second family is that of Shahajahan Monir, 45, a rural medical practitioner from Bishnurampur village in Fulbaria. He had been receiving treatment for tuberculosis in the hospital's new building for about 10 to 12 days.
When the fire began, Shahajahan was descending the stairs with his wife, Harisa Begum, and her sister.
Harisa told Waadaa that they had made it only two or three steps down when they fell as people moved behind them. She lost consciousness. When she recovered, she said, her husband was dead. Her sister was also injured.
Shahajahan's body was taken home Monday night and buried Tuesday morning. The hospital register records his death at 6:35 pm.
Then there is Ramzan Ali, 38.
Ramzan, a CNG-run auto-rickshaw driver from Fulbaria, had developed chest pain earlier Monday. He first went to Fulbaria Upazila Health Complex and was referred to Mymensingh Medical College Hospital.
He was on the fourth floor when the fire broke out. His wife, Khadija Akter, was with him.
She told Waadaa that they tried to descend but became trapped amid the crowd on the staircase. At one point, people were being told that the fire had been extinguished and that patients should return to their beds.
They could move neither up nor down, she said. Her husband died there, she told Waadaa.
Ramzan also had a heart condition, a fact his younger brother Saiful Islam earlier told Prothom Alo newspaper . But Saiful said his brother collapsed during the pushing and crowding on the stairs.
He was subsequently taken to the emergency department, the family said. The hospital register records Ramzan's death at 7:25 pm. His relatives say they also received a death certificate and a gate pass before taking his body home.
The register is central to the conflicting accounts.
It contains five names. Jahanara, erroneously reported dead, was actually being treated in Ward 10. Four others — Kulsum, Shahajahan, Ramzan and Hazera Begum — were marked "brought dead." The incident was recorded in connection with the fire.
Talking with Waadaa, Mainuddin Khan, a member of the three-member investigation committee said, the entries were made by a nurse immediately after the incident to keep track of people arriving at the emergency department. Their inclusion under the fire incident, he said, did not establish that the fire or a stampede caused their deaths.
Doctors had also found no physical signs on the four bodies typically associated with trampling, he said.
The status of Hazera Begum, 50, of Purbadhala in Netrakona, remains particularly unclear. One account obtained by Waadaa quoted her husband as saying the couple had received discharge papers and left the hospital before the fire.
That leaves the three other deaths.
In each case, relatives place the person inside the hospital before the fire. In each case, the family says the person became caught in the rush to leave. And in each case, hospital documentation records a death around the time of the evacuation.
Those accounts do not by themselves establish the medical cause of death.
Ramzan, for example, had gone to the hospital with a heart problem. Shahajahan was being treated for tuberculosis. Hospital officials say the bodies did not show injuries that would establish trampling.
But the accounts raise a narrower question for investigators on whether the movement of patients during the fire contributed to deaths among people who were already ill.
The evacuation itself is also under scrutiny.
Patients interviewed by Prothom Alo newspaper described encountering a locked staircase after the fire began. One nephrology patient said people eventually broke a lock to get out. Other patients described smoke spreading through the building and people becoming sick.
Ramzan's brother gave Waadaa a more specific account, saying four of the hospital's five staircases were closed and the lifts were unavailable.
The divisional commissioner said officials had also received complaints about closed staircases. Hospital authorities told the administration that some had been locked for security reasons. Whether that affected the evacuation will be part of the inquiry.
The hospital's five-member investigation committee is headed by Professor Golam Rahman Bhuiyan of the Department of Medicine. It includes hospital administration and representatives from the Fire Service and Public Works Department. The committee has been instructed to report within three working days.
Police are conducting their own inquiries.
DIG Zahidul Hasan told journalists that investigators were checking hospital wards, the emergency department and morgue and speaking with relatives. Despite reports published by several news organizations, he said, investigators had yet to obtain "concrete evidence" establishing deaths from a stampede.
The original claim of six deaths is therefore unsupported by the information available so far, he added.
—