UST fire traced to air con; damage at P.1M

A fire truck enters the UST campus in Manila, where a fire at a student lab broke out Tuesday. NIÑO JESUS ORBETA

MANILA, Philippines—A fire broke out in a student laboratory at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Hospital in Manila before noon Tuesday, leaving around P100,000 worth of damage to property but causing no deaths or injuries.

It resulted, however, in some minor inconvenience to several patients who had to be transferred to nearby buildings for their own safety and doctors whose clinic operations were disrupted.

Fire officials said the blaze began at 11 a.m. in the skills laboratory on the sixth floor of the hospital’s Martin de Porres annex building on A. H. Lacson Avenue in Sampaloc, Manila. It is where UST nursing students conduct health care simulation practices and is situated right next to a chemistry laboratory.

According to a UST nursing student, who asked not to be identified, they were attending classes in the chemistry laboratory when they heard an explosion, prompting them to immediately evacuate.

“Another nursing student told me that they saw the air-conditioning unit in the [adjacent room] on fire,” the student added.

SFO1 Anthony Quilon of the Sampaloc Fire Station said they also suspected that the fire was caused by the air conditioner although he stressed that this was still under investigation.

He added that they did not have a hard time putting out the fire since it had not yet spread when they arrived in the area. This was in spite of the fact that it took them some time to get to the site because some of the hospital’s security guards blocked their fire trucks.

Although the fire was put out in less than an hour from the time it started, patients staying on the first three floors of the annex, which house hospital rooms and wards, were transferred to the main building.

Outpatients consulting doctors on the fourth and fifth floors were also asked to leave and come back the next day after clinic operations were suspended.