A fire broke out on Thursday evening at Gandhi Hospital on Valiasr Street in Tehran, raising serious questions about the safety of the medical facility. According to the Fire Department’s spokesperson, the hospital had received at least five ‘unsafe warnings,’ with the latest notice issued in November of the previous year.
Mehdi Khosravani, Crisis Manager of Tehran Municipality Region 6, revealed that Gandhi Hospital had been cautioned at least ‘three times’ by the Prevention and Crisis Management Organization of Tehran. What is particularly alarming is that the hospital, which opened in 2013, was initially lauded as a symbol of a new movement with state-of-the-art legal standards, regulations, and earthquake resistance up to a magnitude of 8.5 to 9.
Gandhi Hospital is not the only medical facility with safety concerns in Tehran. Mehdi Hospital, touted as ‘the largest health system project after the 1979 Revolution’ and inaugurated in February 2023 by the regime’s president Ebrahim Raisi, faced safety scrutiny only three months later. The Chief Justice of Tehran Province declared it ‘unsafe’ based on reports from the Tehran Municipality’s fire department and safety services, as well as the approval of the Justice Crime Prevention Council.
Concerns about the safety of buildings in Tehran have been ongoing. In 2021, the Tehran Urban Planning and Architecture Commission revealed that approximately one-third of the 978 residential and non-residential tower buildings in Tehran were situated in difficult roads, contravening the city’s comprehensive and detailed plan regulations.
The issue of unsafe buildings gained prominence following the collapse of the Plasco building in Tehran and the partial collapse of the Metropol building in Abadan. Initially reluctant to disclose information, the Tehran Municipality eventually published the names of 129 unsafe buildings, including arcades, shopping malls, residential complexes, and hospitals.
Despite this disclosure, Alireza Zakani, the mayor of Tehran, and Qodratollah Mohammadi, CEO of the Tehran Fire and Safety Services Organization, have acknowledged a larger problem. Zakani cautioned against the publication of the complete list, while Mohammadi estimated that there are at least 33,000 unsafe buildings in Tehran, underlining the urgent need for comprehensive measures to address this growing crisis.
