Cornwall Fire and Rescue firefighters had to deal with an incident at the county’s main hospital this morning.

At 09.32 reports were received from the Royal Cornwall Hospital, Treliske, in Truro that an automatic fire alarm had been activated in the Tower Block of the hospital. An appliance from Truro Fire Station was immediately mobilised.

On arrival at the hospital, the incident commander requested a further three appliances, due to smoke coming from a room in the building. Firefighters entered the building to investigate, located a fire and used CO2 extinguishers.

Treliske Hospital is one of our largest and complex buildings in the county, and so the fire and rescue service says that the attendance of multiple appliances provides additional crew and equipment to prepare for, but also to prevent, an escalation of a blaze. For this incident two Fire Officers also attended to provide command support.

Staff from the hospital followed their own emergency procedures and performed an evacuation of the block and it was subsequently confirmed that all persons were accounted for.

At 09.56, the incident commander sent a message to the Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service Critical Control Centre saying that the fire was believed to be out and that firefighters were investigating to ensure no further areas of fire. The firefighters also used small tools to aid ventilation of the affected area.

However, at 10.30 appliances were still at the scene and firefighters were investigating further activations of fire alarms in the Tower Block. It was believed that they had all probably been activated due to smoke from the initial incident.

By 11am fire appliances were reported to be starting to leave the incident and all activations of fire alarms in surrounding areas had been confirmed to have been activated by smoke from the incident in the hospital room dealt with earlier.

The fire and rescue service reports that an initial Fire Investigation is being done. The cause of the blaze has been classed as accidental and it has now been confirmed that the fire was confined to a small area.