“I have no doubt that if the work had been faster, and yesterday [Wednesday] marked four months, the hospital could already be open. I am perfectly aware of this. The hospital could already be open,” stated João Mota Vieira during a hearing at the Azorean parliament’s Social Affairs committee that lasted nearly three hours.
The engineer, along with Marco Ávila, authored the report requested by the administration of the Hospital Divino Espírito Santo (HDES) regarding the fire that broke out on May 4 at that health unit, the largest in the Azores.
Mota Vieira considered that the report had the “ability” to accelerate the recovery work of HDES and the construction of the modular hospital, which “were moving at a snail’s pace.”
“We saw great complacency within the hospital. Recovery work was proceeding at an absolutely slow pace. Work from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, very calmly. Everything dirty. Electrical cable installations on top of other incinerated installations,” he denounced.
The expert stated that the “Ponta Delgada hospital should open regardless of the modular hospital” and argued that the modular infrastructure, installed in the HDES heliport area, “is not the best solution.”
“The modular hospital will be fully operational in the last quarter of the year. Four more months will pass. Adding these four months to the other four that have already passed, it’s eight months. Wouldn’t eight months be enough to get HDES functioning? Four months would have been enough. I’m sure they would,” he insisted.
Mota Vieira argued that even if HDES reopened with “some deficiencies,” these would be “less than the deficiencies” of the CUF hospital, modular and other health centers on the island.
“I can’t understand why the emergency room doesn’t open, why the operating room doesn’t open, and so on. I can’t understand. They didn’t burn. In our opinion, the money and effort being spent on the modular hospital should be spent, for now, on the Ponta Delgada hospital,” he reinforced.
The engineer questioned whether safety “is ensured in the modular hospital,” asking if that building is licensed, with up-to-date inspections and with a fire safety project approved by the Regional Civil Protection Service.
The report’s author also emphasized that, at the time of the fire, the HDES fire control center “had been disabled for at least two days,” and warned that the risks that gave rise to the fire are still present.
“At the time of the report, HDES had equipment identical to what burned in other locations and probably still has fire risk areas. Therefore, if the risks that caused the fire were all still present, a fire could happen in another part of the hospital,” he warned.
According to him, at the time of the incident, HDES did not have a mechanical engineer, fire-stopping seals, or electricians with training, with “safety monitoring being done by telephone operators.”
Mota Vieira again suggested conducting an audit on firefighting, considering that “it is not normal for a fire like that to take seven hours” to extinguish.
“It’s good for the regional administration to take the report and apply it to the Horta hospital and other health units,” he said.
On July 5, the authors of the technical report, which Lusa had access to, pointed out “very urgent recommendations” to the administration, such as inspection of all electrical panels and improvement of the internal emergency plan.
HDES, in Ponta Delgada, was affected by a fire on May 4, which forced the transfer of all hospitalized patients to other health units, including outside the region, causing an estimated loss of 24 million euros.
