MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian doctors stayed behind in a burning Tsarist-era hospital in the country’s Far East on Friday to complete open-heart surgery after a fire broke out on the roof while they were operating.
Firefighters who took more than two hours to put out the fire in the city of Blagoveshchensk said they used fans to keep smoke out of the operating room and put a power cord to keep it supplied with electricity.
A group of eight doctors and nurses completed the operation in two hours before moving the patient to another location, the emergency ministry said.
“There is nothing else we can do. We had to save the person. We did everything at the highest level, ”said surgeon Valentin Filatov, quoted by REN TV. He said it had been a heart revascularization surgery.
The ministry said 128 people were evacuated immediately from the hospital when the fire broke out on the roof.
“The clinic was built more than a century ago, in 1907, and the fire spread like lightning across the wooden roofs of the roof,” said the ministry.
No one was reported as injured.
“A bow to doctors and firefighters,” said Vasiliy Orlov, the local regional governor.
Reporting by Maria Vasilyeva; written by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Hugh Lawson