Date:07/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/07/stories/2008120758770300.htm

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

KMC nursing hostel inundated

R. Sujatha

Students in two-storey building have access only to toilets on first floor

— PHOTO: M. VEDHAN

in Isolation: The nursing students’ hostel at the Kilpauk Medical College has been cut off from the hospital building following last week’s rain.

CHENNAI: Classes for 200 first and second-year nursing students of Kilpauk Medical College have been suspended since last week after rainwater inundated their hostel. The students have been sent back home.

Power supply has been severed and the students in the two-storey building have access only to toilets on the first floor, nursing staff said.

Around 35 third-year nursing students continue to live on the first floor. The college has declared study holidays for all nursing students, a senior nurse said.

The hostel building is located behind the hospital near the nurse quarters, which has also been inundated. Public Works Department workers in-charge of the hospital maintenance have placed sandbags on the path leading to the women’s hostel. Hospital and PWD workers blamed the inundation on the abutting fish pond maintained by the Fisheries Department.

“It is called the ozone pond… When the pond fills up, the water flows into the hospital premises.”

PWD workers said the nurses quarters, built more than 70 years ago, were now three feet below the road level. In the past, rainwater drained gradually, but the situation was worse this year. The nurses and the students could enter the quarters and the hostel through the neighbouring Directorate of Medical Education on Poonamallee High Road, but, after the hospital built its compound wall in 1986, this was closed.

Hospital Dean M. Dhanapal said the problem involved many departments.He had discussed the matter with the Health Minister and the Health Secretary and action was expected soon.