Rooftop solar panels blamed for Pretoria East Hospital fire

City of Tshwane’s Emergency Services have confirmed that a fire broke out at the Netcare Pretoria East Hospital on Thursday.

Parts of the hospital went up in flames after solar panels on top of some sections of the hospital caught fire. 

Coetzee Minister for Community Safety in Tshwane, was at the scene and said all patients were evacuated to an area outside the hospital’s entrance and were moved to some wards after emergency teams extinguished the fire.

 “The fire is extinguished at this moment of time, most of the vehicles are ready to just about depart. We had a look at the patients in the front. They’ve separated them so the hospital will be declared by the emergency services as safe, and then they can move some of the patients back into the hospital.

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 “At this moment, everything is controlled. It looks like there’s a little bit of chaos in the front because of all the patients that had to be taken out of the hospital, just to make sure that everybody is safe. The good news is that nobody got injured in this fire, and there are no deaths at all.”