Electrical fire at MCMH

Operations at the medical laboratories at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital (MCMH) are continuing as normal today, despite an electrical fire that destroyed an air conditioning unit in one of the lab offices on Wednesday night.{{more}}

Claudette Laidlow-Williams, Chief Laboratory Technologist told SEARCHLIGHT that the fire was contained to a room in the histopathology laboratory, and that only an air-conditioning unit was destroyed by the fire.

“The fire officials said that it was an electrical fire in the area where we test for cancers in tissues.

“Everything will continue as normal. Once the clean up takes place everything will be back to normal. There was no equipment damage,” Laidlow-Williams said.

SEARCHLIGHT understands that around 7:30 on Wednesday evening, a hospital security officer saw smoke coming from windows of the lab, which face the main road and Victoria Park.

The officer alerted the lab technician who was on call at the time, then the fire brigade was summoned.

A number of senior hospital and health administrators, including Permanent Secretary Luis de Shong and Chief Medical Officer Simone Keizer-Beache were on hand to assess the damage.

Laidlow-Williams was of the opinion that a major disaster was averted at the hospital with the containment of the fire. She said that there had been no incident of fire in that section of the hospital, since the building was refurbished in the late 90s.

“If it had spread we would have lost the lab, but thankfully it is just the A C and superficial damage from the smoke and soot.”(JJ)