A Research on Recent Hospital Fires and Their Causes

In our country, health services are provided by public hospitals affiliated to the health ministry and universities along with private hospitals. University research hospitals are the most important healthcare institutions after the ministry of health. In addition to direct patient treatment and care in the healthcare system, the health services at universities involve various health education and medical research activities as well. Therefore, university health institutions are more complex and crowded than other hospitals. In these health institutions, many spaces such as policlinics, classrooms, laboratories, cafeteria, offices, kitchen, boiler room, penthouse, archive, electrical installation, flammable and explosive materials, oxygen systems are gathered under a single roof. Moreover, the number of employees, students, patients and visitors is higher in university hospitals compared to other hospitals. For this reason, a fire especially in university hospitals may lead to a disaster. Fire safety measures should be at the highest level in hospitals that are located in the middle dangerous class in terms of fire hazard. In this study, recent fires occurred in the currently operating hospitals in the country are evaluated in terms of fire causes and fire precautions to be taken. It was determined that the recent fires occurring in university hospitals in our country are mainly started due to electricity and carelessness. With planning -according to today's technology- both passive systems that play an important role in the design of buildings and active extinguishing systems that do not allow fire incidents to grow, the risk of fire in health institutions can be eliminated or minimized.