No fire evacuation plan was in place and fire exits were frequently blocked at a care home where 14 elderly people lost their lives in a tragic fire, a fatal accident inquiry was told.
The inquiry was also told a fire training video was a “dud” because it did not cover all possible situations at the Rosepark Care Home in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, at the time of the tragedy in January 2004.
Paul Wade, representing Strathclyde Fire & Rescue & Strathclyde Fire Board, asked Eleanor Ward, a nurse at Rosepark in 2004, if she was aware of an evacuation plan. She replied: “I don’t remember there being one.”
Mr Wade: “The evacuation would have been made up from your own experience, rather than from what you were informed about?”
Mrs Ward: “Yes.”
Nurses Patricia Taylor and Rose-Marie Buckley, who had worked at the home for more than six years at the time of the fire, later told the inquiry they had never been involved in a full evacuation drill at the home.
When asked about the set procedures that should be carried out after a fire alarm had sounded, Mrs Buckley replied: “It was probably something I didn’t really think about … nobody said I should do a particular thing.”
The inquiry later heard how the fire exits of the home were sometimes blocked by wheelchairs and hoists, used to
help move the residents.
Just over 11 months before the fire, Mrs Buckley wrote a note to the rest of the staff imploring them to keep the corridors clear.
“I was fed up with clearing fire exits,” she said.
Douglas Thomson, for the Scottish Care Commission, asked how often she had had to clear obstacles.
Mrs Buckley: “Often enough. I’m normally a very patient and tolerant person, you really have to push me … there was no great improvement.”
Mrs Ward agreed that, if it was dark, there were implements in the corridors that would obstruct people trying to evacuate the home.
Andrew Murphy, who is representing Sarah Meany, the home’s matron at the time of the fire, said the training video, shown to new staff as part of their induction, was a “dud video which doesn’t cover all situations”.
He also criticised the questionnaire staff were asked to fill in to confirm they understood the procedures recommended by the video. “It doesn’t cover all the scenarios,” he said.
Mrs Ward said the questionnaire was “very confusing”.
Mrs Taylor, who was on duty hours before the fire started, told the inquiry that the home’s fire panel, which informed nurses of the location of the cause of a fire alarm, had been changed days before the fire with no attempt to inform the staff.
She said she had noticed the change only because she had seen it by chance.
The inquiry, in Motherwell, continues.
