Patient, 88, charged

Press, 1 May 1981, Page 1

Patient, 88, charged

NZPA ■ . ’ '■ Sydney/ A man,' aged 88,' was yesterday charged at. a, special bedside court in a Sydney Hospital With 'the ; murder of 16 people whodied in a fire at a nursing home at Sylvania, south, of Sydney, on Wednesday. He is Harry Hatton, who was also charged with having set fire to the Pacific Heights Nursing Home. Hatton, who is believed to have been a patient in. the home, was admitted to Prince Alfred Hospital at. Camperdown after the fire. He was remanded to appear at the Sydney

Coroner’s /-Court-., today subject ’to his being fit; to attend. No bail was sought and no. plea was entered. Fifteen rhen and. one woman died as a' result of the fire, which broke out shortly after 11 p.m.‘ Four other people were in a serious condition in Sydney hospitals .. yesterday suffering from smoke inhalation. Fort y-erght elderl> r patients, many of them bedridden and aged ■in their 60s and 70s, were pulled to safety by firemen when the blaze sent thick smoke pouring through the front of the 13-year-old, single-storey brick home.

■, The police said that sthe fire had broken out in an area near the front of the home, which had been, subdivided' into private bedrooms, and that it was in this area that most of the dead had been found. One of the victims had died in hospital. The acting chief officer of the Board of Fire Commissioners, Mr Harry Atkinson, said that many more people could have died in the fire if there had been no automatic smoke doors in the home. The doors had isolated the fire and had stopped it from spreading quickly to other parts of the building. The electromagnetic doors automatically closed When smoke reached' a certain level He could not. comment,

because Of the pending coroner’s inquiry, on- how! the patients had become trapped in the building.

A Health Commission report leaked to the news! media last December listed 16 private- hospitals and) nursing homes as. fire haz- i - ards, but the Pacific; Heights home was not on the list. . The New South Wales Health Minister, Mr Kevin; Stewart, told the State Parliament yesterday that; the Pacific Heights home had been inspected for fire safety by the State Health Commission last year. The commission had made cer-; tain suggestions con- i cerning fire safety and 1 these had been. acted ond by the proprietors of the n home.- .