A small fire at the MUHC's Glen hospital on Wednesday caused little damage, but is raising questions about how the NDG facility handles such emergencies.
The fire broke out just before 9:30 a.m. Wednesday in a dryer on the first floor of Bloc E, where the Research Institute is located. It wasn't a large fire, but the smoke from it set off the sprinklers on three floors of the building, causing some flooding, and forcing some elevators to be turned off.
About 20 people became stuck in an elevator in the nearby Bloc D — the Royal Victoria Hospital bloc — for about two hours. Those people were packed fairly tightly inside with only intermittent contact with the outside world before they were rescued by firefighters.
The distraught people in the elevator worked mostly in blood services, and that resulted in delays for processing blood tests.
Pierre-Marc Legris, the director of technical services at the MUHC, says an evacuation got underway Bloc E went out six minutes after the fire began.
"The floor where the fire started was evacuated six minutes after the fire started, and a few minutes later, Montreal firefighters took control of the situation," Legris says. "About 11 minutes after the floor concerned was evacuated, the firemen ordered a complete evacuation of the Bloc E for preventive measures."
Another report, however, suggests it took as long as 40 minutes for the evacuation order to go out.
The MUHC now says it has opened an investigation into the incident, and within the next few months, it will be carrying out a fire evacuation drill — the first such drill in the hospital's four-year existence.
"We're always looking for constant improvement," Legris says.