Patients had to be wheeled past the source of a fire at Gozo General Hospital on Christmas Day because a fire exit on one of the wards was shut off.

The fire broke out in an IT room near the entrance to the male ward at around 9pm on Sunday, leading to a mass evacuation.

Times of Malta understands that a second door on the ward was closed off, leaving hospital staff with no option but to lead some patients out through the ward entrance and into thickening smoke spreading along corridors.

Nobody was injured but several patients and staff had to be treated with oxygen masks and an inquiry is investigating what led to the fire.

Sources said that had the fire been more serious, it could have ended in tragedy.

According to three senior sources, a second door on the side of the male ward leading to another corridor was traditionally regarded as a fire exit for that ward.

Before the hospital was renovated, the male ward was separated from the operating theatre with a stretch of corridor and a side exit leading directly out to the corridor. That door served as a fire exit. This is a simplified plan of part of the hospital and may lack architectural precision. Other wards and corridors are not marked for clarity.

But when the hospital was renovated more than a decade ago, that corridor was closed off and transformed into an extension of the operating theatre opposite the male ward. The change rendered the door inoperative because it now leads into another closed space.

After the hospital was renovated, that corridor was transformed into an extension of the operating theatre, essentially closing off the emergency door and the whole stretch of corridor by a new door leading to the theatre. Consequently, patients were evacuated. Graphics: Massimo Cassar/Design Studio This is a simplified plan of part of the hospital and may lack architectural precision. Other wards and corridors are not marked for clarity.

Consequently, on Sunday, that door remained closed and could not be used as a fire exit.

For patients, the only way out of the male ward was through the main entrance near the fire or through a door adjoining it with the female ward.

On top of that, the decades-old hospital infrastructure lacks the basic architecture such as fire escapes that would facilitate safe and rapid evacuation.

Civil Protection Department personnel extinguished the fire before it could spread to other wards, and police, nurses and hospital staff braved the smoke to evacuate 59 patients that were in danger.

Witnesses said they saw the nurses literally “risk their lives” for the patients.

Some patients were evacuated in wheelchairs and others were wheeled out on beds.

Inside the hospital, the male and female wards and the operating theatre are situated next to each other with adjoining doors leading from one ward to the other.

The female ward is on the far left. Next to it is the male ward and next to that is the operating theatre.

There are no corridors separating the wards but all three have a front entrance each, leading to a main corridor which leads to the Accident and Emergency Department and to the hospital’s main entrance.

The female ward also has a back door that could be used as an alternative exit, but sources said staff could not use it on Sunday because beds cannot be easily wheeled out of it.

Consequently, they opted to evacuate some of the male patients out of the ward’s main door, past the source of the fire, out into the corridor and out of the hospital.

Other male patients were evacuated through the internal door linking the male with the female ward, then through the main entrance of the female ward and out into the corridor that would lead them out of the hospital.

The female patients took the same route out into the corridor through their ward’s main exit, but to exit the hospital they also had to pass by the male ward’s main entrance, which was emitting smoke.

Steward Malta, which has been running the hospital since 2018, said it could not provide replies to any questions from Times of Malta “given the ongoing magisterial inquiry”.