Day Of Cancellations Follows Royal Hospital Fire

A building site fire in one of Belfast's largest hospital complexes has seen all outpatient appointments and some surgery being cancelled.

Around 130 patients had to be moved on Tuesday after a gas cylinder caught fire at the Royal Victoria Hospital. The blaze broke out at the site where a new critical care unit is being built, and a 200-metre exclusion zone was set up immediately afterwards to keep people away from a potential explosion.

Part of the Falls Road was closed during the evacuation as fire crews put out the fire.

The disruption is due to a 24-hour cooling period for the cylinder which is automatically treated in the same way as an unexploded bomb when heated up by any fire.

However, all cardiac surgery and plastic surgery will go ahead as usual today.

A spokesman for the Belfast Health and Social Services Trust which runs the hospital said it immediately activated its "major incident plan" in response.

Medical Director, Dr Tony Stephens, said: "Outpatient services and some operations will be disrupted and appointments will be cancelled and we will be writing to those patients.

"We are trying to bring all services back by the afternoon, but we are working to resolve that."

Patients are asked to ring their normal outpatients number for appointments in the afternoon.

Dr Stephens also paid tribute to the "calm and professional manner" in which staff across the site tackled the incident.

Police said that by around 7pm last night, all road closures had been lifted and officers had left the area.

(BMcC/JM)