Moscow (AFP)
They could not stop despite the flames: in Russia, surgeons successfully completed open heart surgery on Friday as their hospital was ravaged by fire.
In Blagoveshchensk, in the Far East, the heart surgery clinic caught fire in the late morning, evacuating 128 people and filling the building with smoke.
At the same time, a team of eight people were operating on a patient's heart on the ground floor.
"We could not interrupt him (...) we had to save this person and we did everything at the highest level. The operation was completely finished and without difficulties", declared Valentin Filatov, the doctor in charge, on Rossiya 24 television.
"There was no panic," said another caregiver, Antonina Smolina.
According to the emergency services, an electric cable was laid by them to the operating room while the electricity was cut in the building and fans were installed to evacuate the smoke.
"The control of the fire was complicated by the fact that (...) the fire was active on the whole surface, that is to say 1,600 square meters", explained Konstantin Rybalko, deputy director of the Service of the emergency situations of the region, in a video released by the authorities.
After the procedure was completed and after making sure that nothing threatened the patient's life, caregivers evacuated him and left the burning building with him, to transfer him to another hospital, according to local authorities.
The fire, due to an electrical problem according to initial findings, was brought under control and there were no casualties.
Local authorities promised to decorate the doctors who continued the operation and the firefighters who extinguished the blaze.
© 2021 AFP