Patients evacuated from wards after fire at Gozo Hospital

Patients were evacuated from wards in Gozo Hospital on Sunday evening after a fire, Steward Healthcare said.

It said the fire broke out in the IT room of one of the hospital wards. It was contained within this room and was controlled and extinguished rapidly by firemen of the Civil Protection Department.

However smoke spread to a number of wards and rooms in the adjacent areas and hospital corridors.

"All patients in the male and female wards were immediately evacuated and safely transferred to the hospital’s Outpatients Department and to the Barts Medical School within the hospital campus," Steward said.

The blaze broke out at around 9pm and 59 patients were evacuated, a spokesman for Steward Healthcare told Times of Malta. The Civil Protection Department deployed five fire-tenders.

No one was injured and all people were accounted for but the evacuation meant the patients had to be moved, in their beds, outside and then back inside to the alternative wards. 

The staff are working to bring the situation back to normal as soon as possible.

The minister for the elderly, JoEtienne Abela, who is Gozitan, said in a Facebook post that he was in constant contact with the hospital...