There are accidents, and then there are disasters that are allowed to happen. The fire at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad, which claimed the lives of newborn babies, increasingly appears to belong to the second category. The findings of the interim inquiry report are devastating, not because they reveal some extraordinary or unforeseeable chain of events, but because they reveal something much worse: basic precautions were apparently absent, warnings had been ignored, and a hospital entrusted with the lives of some of the most vulnerable human beings imaginable was woefully unprepared for a fire.

Start with the most basic fact. There was no water sprinkler system in the ward where the babies were housed. There was no fire alarm system either. This was not a roadside clinic in some remote village. This was PIMS, one of Pakistan’s premier public-sector hospitals, located in the federal capital, minutes away from the country’s most powerful institutions. And the ward in question was caring for newborn babies.

Patients in a neonatal unit cannot simply get up and run when a fire breaks out. They cannot follow illuminated exit signs. They cannot shout for help. Many may be dependent on incubators, oxygen, or other medical equipment. Their survival depends entirely on the adults and the systems around them. That makes fire prevention and emergency preparedness in such a ward not merely important but absolutely fundamental. Yet, according to the interim findings, the ward was in violation of WHO guidelines and requirements for such a facility.

Then there are the standard operating procedures. PIMS reportedly has 13 SOPs or protocols governing different aspects of its operations. Yet there was no dedicated SOP dealing with fire safety. There were references to fire safety in two subsections, but that is........

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