FEBRUARY
13, 2015
WESTON,
FLORIDA
The
Cleveland Clinic in Weston, Fla., near Miami, was evacuated Friday afternoon
after witnesses reported hearing an explosion inside one of the buildings on
the hospital campus.
Hundreds of
employees and patients were evacuated Friday after a propane tank exploded
causing a massive fire, CBS News Miami reported.
Broward Sheriff
Fire Rescue crews were sent to the hospital grounds, where a fire was quickly
extinguished from the roof of the new cancer and neurology center still under
construction. The Broward County (Fla.) Sun Sentinel reported.
No one was
injured in the blaze, which started around 12:30 p.m. on the rooftop between
the hospital and the Egil and Pauline Braathen Facility, according to CBS
News Miami. The fire caused the evacuation of the Cleveland Clinic, the
hospital next to it, and the construction site of the $90 million, 143,000
square-foot Egil and Pauline Braathen Center that had been set to open later
this month, The Sun Sentinel reported. The evacuation lasted for about an hour,
hospital officials said.
Firefighters
were able to keep the fire contained to the rooftop and put it out in about 25
minutes, Broward County Sheriff's Fire Rescue told CBS News Miami. After
an hour, normal operations resumed in the outpatient clinic, according to
clinic officials who also said the fire was construction-related.
Construction
crews had been using a 100-pound propane tank to do work. Sometime while
the workers were on break for lunch, the tank exploded, Broward Sheriff's Fire
Rescue told CBS News Miami.
"We
got the call just after 12:30 p.m., and the fire was out in 20 minutes,"
Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue spokesperson Mike Jachles told the Sun Sentinel.
"Obviously, any time you have a large number of people and a healthcare
facility, you need to deploy an adequate number of units.''
Jachles
could not confirm the cause of the fire and explosion to The Sun Sentinel, but
said the sheriff's office was investigating. He said firefighters felt the
blast as they arrived and a plume of black smoke was visible from nearby
Interstate 75.
"We'll
be checking to see if there were propane tanks being used in the
construction," Jachles said.
Leo Perri
told The Sun Sentinel he was working on the Braathen Center's paging system on
the first floor when he heard the fire alarm. Like most of the construction
workers, he ignored it - they had been testing the fire alarms all week. Then,
one of the general contractors yelled, "Everybody get out of the
building!"
According
to Perri, roofers had been applying hot tar to the roof to waterproof it. The
tar was heated from a 100-pound propane tank.
"It
was scary. The fire was like a tornado," Perri told The Sun Sentinel as he
spun his finger in circles.
Brandon
Hull, an EEG technologist, told The Sun Sentinel he had just finished with a
patient when he heard "code red," meaning fire in the building. He
was on the fourth floor of the hospital, adjacent to the Braathen Center, and
he heard the explosion and felt it shake the hospital. Once he heard the order
to evacuate, he went downstairs and walked out the front door.
"It
was a pretty calm scene for what was happening," Hull told The Sun
Sentinel.
