[INSPRIED_5] India, how could this happen?

The title of this article grabbed my attention, one because when over 90 people die in a hospital, it sounds much more like an epidemic, but the situation is easily just as horrifying.  Over 90 people died as a fire broke out in the hospital, and much of the confusion, and lack of action can be directly attributed to ineptitude and idiocy of hospital workers.  How something like this could have happened, we might never know, but certainly an investigation will go on to find a reason why hospital workers ran as bodies burned in their beds.

In some of India's wealthiest areas lie hospitals that have some of the world's most revolutionary technology.  Cancer centers are gifted with radiation therapy tools and high-level trauma units just to be sure any patient that comes and visits their hospital, there would be a promise to every patient that they would get the best care in India.

It's too bad that plain human idiocy killed over 90 of these people.  Just as a simple synopsis of the story, a fire broke out within the facility.  Since hospitals are typically air locked to prevent diseases and bad air quality from entering the facility, the smoke from the fire spread to all the other rooms in the facility.  This continued as the fire ravaged through nearly a hundred rooms in the building.  People outside the building could see the flames jumping from the windows, and when they tried to enter the building to perform some rescue, security guards pushed them back and told them not to worry about a "little kitchen fire."  As the crowds pushed, hospital workers fled, running as far as they could away from the fire, leaving hundreds stranded in the building unable to leave their beds.

The fire suppressant system and the fire detection systems both failed to work, turning this problem into an outright catastrophe.  It wasn't for quite some time that they finally started letting people leave the hospital, and once the smoke cleared out, there were bodies found all over the building.

Why would the hospital workers flee the fire and totally forget about everyone else in the building?  Why did security guards just push people back when they could've walked outside to see flames coming from the windows?  So far, 6 people are charged with culpable homicide, but I don't think that's enough.  Every worker who fled without helping someone out of the building should be held responsible for all the deaths.  Also, what about the fire alarm or suppression systems?  Are the same models being used in other buildings?  How can they be sure to fix those systems so that more innocent people don't die?

This terrible catastrophe is just flat out sad.  People died who didn't need to.

Full Article: NY Times