PETALING JAYA, Oct 26 — Quick-thinking firemen like Johor Fire and Rescue Department assistant director Mohd Rizal Buang prevented more lives from being lost in the Sultanah Aminah Hospital tragedy.

Rizal, 40, was among the first of 160 firemen who responded to the fire yesterday morning.

He said when he arrived at the scene, he was told that there were patients trapped in the building.

"We have been trained to treat rescues as if our own family members are involved,” he told Malay Mail later when asked how he had prepared himself to enter the burning building.

Rizal and his team entered the second floor of the hospital which was in flames through the windows.

"As soon as I reached the affected area, I could hear screams and see people running back and forth trying to escape the fire,” he said.

"We ordered the staff and patients to break the windows to ventilate the building as it was so full of smoke. We could hardly see what was in front of us.”

While ordering the windows to be broken, he said he pushed a stretcher with a badly burnt victim on it out of the ward.

He said the hospital blocks were connected but the fire in the south wing was right at the entrance of the ward, trapping the victims inside.

"My focus was to send out as many people as I could from the affected area to safety, which is in this case outside the ward,” he said.

As he pushed the stretcher out, he also held one of the staff members.

"I wrapped my arms around him and barged into the fire. We both pushed the stretcher towards the next building using the corridor and took a lift down,” he said.  

"As I reached the ground floor with the victim on the stretcher, medical officials attended to the victim.

"I continued with my operations while medical officers took charge of rescued victims. As soon as I got up to the second floor again, I knew it was almost impossible to get into the ward again as the fire had spread.”

He said the team then tried rescuing others from the next building by sending batches down the staircase, while some had to use the lift.

Other firemen were trying to douse the fire.

"Most of you might think we are crazy because people are jumping out of windows and we are going in, but it is just what we do,” he said, adding that he offered prayers for everyone who lost their family members.

Meanwhile, Johor Fire and Rescue Department director Othman Abdullah said the fire was brought under control in about 45 minutes.

He said the smoke thickened rapidly after the mattresses caught fire, impeding vision.

"Putting out the fire was manageable, but rescuing the critically ill victims was the toughest part of operations. Once the fire caught onto the mattresses, it spread rapidly and the smoke became very thick,” he said, adding that one patient was saved while six others who died were already critically burnt when firemen arrived.

The dead included the victim on the stretcher that Rizal had pushed out from the ward. The victim was later identified as Choo Lin Fung, 37.

"It was hard for firemen to see anything, let alone locate the patients. Furthermore, these are patients who were extremely ill and too weak to move,” said Othman.

"Firemen had to be very careful when carrying the patients out along with the medical equipment their lives depended on.”

He said the firemen were divided into groups, where some were tasked with the rescuing the victims and others were in charge of the dousing the fire.

There were 160 personnel involved in operations and 10 fire trucks on the scene.