Anaesthetised children who were about to undergo operations were evacuated from Great Ormond Street Hospital with other patients after a fire and explosion.
The hospital’s Chief Executive Dr Jane Collins said the fire started in the cardiac wing of the children’s hospital on Monday.
No-one is believed to have been injured in the fire which is thought to have involved a gas cylinder.
Dr Collins told reporters: “There was a fire in our cardiac block this morning that seemed to have led to an explosion, probably that of a medical gas cylinder.
“We obviously put our major incident plan into action very quickly and evacuated all of the patients and staff from that block.”
Dr Collins said that some patients, particularly those needing urgent operations, would need to be transferred to nearby hospitals such as the Brompton Hospital and Guys.
She said there were about 30 or 40 patients in the cardiac wing at the time of the fire.
She added: “There were some children who were due to have surgery this morning so they were already in the process of being anaesthetised. We have already woken these patients up because we want to make sure they are in a stable and safe situation.”
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