PIMS Nursery Fire Kills 14 Newborns in Islamabad

ISLAMABAD — At 6:45 on Wednesday morning, before most of the city was awake, an air-conditioner compressor exploded inside the newborn nursery on the third floor of the Maternal and Child Health ward at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences.

By the time the fire was out, fourteen babies were dead.

One was carried out alive.

The emergency call reached Islamabad's fire service at around 6:54am, according to Chief Commissioner Sohail Ashraf. Six fire tenders and four ambulances were dispatched. Television footage from the scene showed rescue workers climbing ladders and going in through smashed windows to reach the ward — men on ladders, at a hospital, trying to get to a room full of newborns.

The blaze was controlled quickly. That was never the problem. The problem was what a fire does inside a sealed room where oxygen is being pumped in for babies who cannot breathe on their own.

What the government has confirmed

Federal Health Minister Mustafa Kamal said the fire began with an explosion in an air-conditioning unit in the children's intensive care area, and that the oxygen present in the ward caused it to intensify rapidly. He put the death toll at 14 and called the loss of the newborns a heartbreaking tragedy.

The Prime Minister's Office later confirmed the same figure. The Islamabad district administration said 14 children were "completely burnt" and that survivors were shifted to the ICU.

A note on the numbers: early reports varied, but government and hospital statements available at publication time put the death toll at 14 and said at least one baby was rescued. Because this is a developing story, any revision should be based on a named official update.

An inquiry with a 24-hour deadline

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif took notice within hours, calling the loss irreparable and ordering that the circumstances be examined in detail, those responsible identified, and the strictest possible action taken.

President Asif Ali Zardari also offered condolences, describing the deaths as an irreparable loss, and directed that hospitals — particularly wards holding newborns — ensure effective fire-safety arrangements. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said the government stood with the grieving families.

The Islamabad district magistrate has constituted a multi-agency fact-finding committee, convened by the Additional Deputy Commissioner (General), ICT. Its terms of reference go beyond simply naming the ignition source. The committee has been asked to establish:

the exact cause of the fire and what allowed it to spread

whether adequate and *functional* fire-safety measures existed in the ward

how quickly rescue and firefighting teams responded, and how effective that response was

It has been directed to report within 24 hours. The MCH ward has been sealed.

The allegation the committee will have to answer

Parents at the hospital have alleged that staff were not present in the incubation area when the fire broke out.

That claim is not verified. It is also the single most important question the inquiry will have to settle, because it determines whether this was a catastrophic equipment failure or a catastrophic equipment failure compounded by an empty room. Fourteen infants in incubators cannot evacuate themselves. Someone has to be standing there.

What Islamabad's broader fire-safety survey found

Here is the detail that should sit heaviest.

In January, the Capital Development Authority said it had surveyed about 6,500 public and private buildings in Islamabad, including 300 government facilities. The CDA reported that most surveyed buildings had not obtained approval for fire-safety plans or been issued completion and fire-safety certificates.

Those citywide findings do not establish whether PIMS itself lacked the required approvals or equipment. That hospital-specific question belongs to the inquiry. The committee must determine whether functional alarms, suppression systems, evacuation procedures and equipment-maintenance controls were present in the nursery, and whether they worked as intended.

Officials said oxygen in the ward intensified the fire after the reported air-conditioning compressor explosion. Investigators will need to establish the precise ignition sequence and whether equipment placement, maintenance or emergency procedures contributed to the scale of the loss.

What happens now

The families are at PIMS. Some of them arrived on Wednesday morning expecting to take a baby home this week.

An inquiry report is due within a day. Its credibility will depend on whether it publishes a clear timeline, identifies the safety systems that failed, and assigns responsibility on evidence rather than assumption. The wider test is whether its findings lead to documented inspections and corrective work in other newborn and intensive-care units.