The Otago Daily Times has been provided with a photo of the present alarm situation at Wakari Hospital’s Helensburgh House, which showed the alarm covered with duct tape and a sign advising people to use the air horn and shout ‘‘fire, fire’’ in the event of one.
PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons described the situation as ‘‘alarming’’.
‘‘Patient and staff safety cannot rely on security doing more checks, air horns and people yelling ‘fire fire’; it’s a sick joke.
‘‘Fire alarms are critical and the results can be tragic when they do not work.
‘‘Health NZ ... needs to urgently fix the fire alarm and audit all other buildings to make sure fire alarms are working.’’
The PSA was continuing to consider all options for requiring more urgent action from Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora (HNZ), she said.
The comments come after the ODT revealed part of the hospital’s fire alarm system had not been working at Helensburgh House for some time and it was only discovered when a delivery truck accidentally backed into an outdoor fire-hose valve.
An email to staff, obtained by the ODT, said there was a fault found on the first floor of Helensburgh House on April 17, which resulted in the building being evacuated.
‘‘A new fire panel is currently being built for Helensburgh House and expected to be in place and functioning by mid-May.
‘‘Until this work is completed, the interim fire evacuation procedure remains in place and must continue to be followed at all times.’’
The email said the procedure involved using one of the provided air horns to signal the rest of the building and then following instructions from ward/team leaders, the fire evacuation consultant and Fire and Emergency NZ.
At least one Wakari Hospital staff member was worried about the safety of these procedures.
‘‘What’s very heartbreaking is that there’s two patient wards in that building and both wards are for patients that are extremely vulnerable.
‘‘If there was a fire, they would have all been burned to death because the fire doors don’t unlock.’’
‘‘The attitude of the organisation towards staff and people is just shocking. There’s no value on life.’’
HNZ Te Waipounamu regional director of infrastructure Rob Ojala said as part of building warrant of fitness compliance requirements set by local councils, independently qualified external assessors assessed alarm systems on a monthly basis.
‘‘The Helensburgh House system was on the list for replacement, but had passed monthly testing prior to the recent events. The fault developed after its most recent assessment.
‘‘Prior to this incident, we were already progressing urgent scoping work to replace the fire panel and associated components, as routine testing had identified that we could not be fully confident in the reliability of the system.
‘‘This incident confirmed those concerns were well-founded and reinforced the need to continue working closely with staff and fire safety specialists on appropriate interim measures while the replacement programme is completed.’’
The safety of patients and staff safety was HNZ’s utmost priority, Mr Ojala said.
