Twisted ceiling frames, charred walls and a shaft of sunlight piercing a partially collapsed roof were all that was left of a neonatal ward on Thursday after a devastating hospital fire killed 14 infants at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS). The door of the nursery for premature babies was blown off, and the room is now a black hole at the end of a brightly lit corridor in Islamabad's leading public hospital.
Outside the ward, staff used water to clean the floor, while others rubbed soot and grime off the walls. Just a few metres away, life was returning to the hospital, with patients admitted to wards while doctors and nurses bustled around the facility's maze-like corridors. But tensions remained palpable, with police and security personnel patrolling inside the ward while guards carrying assault rifles or long sticks stood outside the entrance and on the building's grounds.
The heightened nervousness was underscored by security guards blocking photographers and video journalists from entering the hospital. A nurse, who was visibly unsettled and asked not to be identified, said: "When the fire broke out, everything happened within minutes. People are right, we ran for our lives because by then it was too late. The fire had spread everywhere, and there was nothing we could do."
The government has already launched an investigation, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif personally supervising the process. However, authorities have also defended the response times of emergency services on what was a public holiday, saying they arrived within minutes, while families at the hospital claimed it took them hours to turn up.