Source: The New York Times
NEW DELHI — To all appearances, the Advanced Medical Research Institute hospital in Kolkata was state of the art. It had some of the latest, most precise radiation therapy equipment for patients in its cancer center. It offered special deluxe suites for its wealthiest patients. Its trauma surgery unit was said to be one of the best in eastern India, as well as its highly efficient emergency room.
But early on Friday the hospital, known as Amri, confronted an emergency for which it seemed to have no plan: an inferno in its basement that transformed the entire hermetically sealed and air-conditioned building into a giant chimney for a searing, smoky fire.
When the smoke cleared, 94 people were dead, scores more were injured and a nation was left asking: Is nowhere, even an expensive, privately run hospital designed for the country’s upwardly mobile classes, safe from the disaster that seems to lurk on every railway line, highway on-ramp and festival ground?