Austria
Traces of cigarettes after a clinic fire that killed three
Fire engines and emergency services are in front of the clinic in Mödling. photo
© Matthias Stur/PRESS OFFICE BFK MÖDLING/APA/dpa
Three men are killed in a fire in a clinic, a woman is slightly injured. Investigators are now targeting a patient who was known to be a heavy smoker.
Three patients died in a fire in an Austrian clinic. The investigators assume that the nocturnal fire in a room in the Mödling state hospital near Vienna on Tuesday was triggered by a cigarette. For the three men in the room, any help came too late, said Matthias Hofer, spokesman for the State Health Agency (LGA), to the APA news agency.
As a police spokesman said, the traces indicated that the smoldering fire emanated from the bed of a 75-year-old patient who was known to be a heavy smoker. A technical defect as the cause of the fire was not found, it said. The man and two roommates aged 78 and 81 died. A woman suffered minor injuries. Originally, the LGA had assumed about 20 minor injuries.
The fire alarm went off at 1:00 a.m. “This fire should have spread very quickly with great intensity in the room. The whole station was filled with smoke within a very short time,” Hofer told ORF. Around 170 firefighters went to the large hospital and ended their firefighting mission after about two hours.
Around 90 patients had to be transferred because of the smoke. In addition, operations were stopped on Tuesday because the hospital’s five operating rooms were temporarily unusable. The Landesklinikum Mödling has almost 340 beds and treats around 34,000 inpatients every year.