Spirited probe into hospital fire riddle.
By Tony Martin.
Health chiefs probing a fire at a Merseyside hospital have been told to bring in the ghostbusters. Walton Hospital bosses are baffled by a fire which destroyed an expensive X-ray machine following a chance in a million explosion. Now medical staff have said they fear a poltergeist may be to blame for the £100,000 fire. The mystery blaze at Walton’s x-ray department in the early hours of February 19 came after…
Another unexplained fire three months before ; Staff had complained of seeing mystery shadows; An X-ray casette was reportedly hurled across a room by an unseen force.
The bizarre poltergeist claim is one of the explanations staff have put forward for the fire which destroyed the X-ray machine which had been turned off after use on a patient just 10 minutes before.
South Sefton Health Authority heard that experts have failed to pinpoint a cause for the explosion of a rotating anode in the X-ray machine, which is being blamed for starting the fire. The authority’s estates manager, Terence Sweeney, said tests by his staff and by the manufacturers of the machine had failed to come up with an explanation. He said the machine, which was nine years old, was one of 50 in use in hospitals around the country.
Expert technicians have so far been left “almost incredulous” that the explosion could have happened. After the meeting he confirmed that some staff had spoken “seriously” of the poltergeist theory for the blaze at the big Liverpool hospital. But he said more extensive technical tests on the components of the machine were now planned in the manufacturer’s laboratories. He said: “We are determined to pursue this investigation until we find out what caused the explosion.”
Liverpool Echo, 15th March 1986.