Veli-Pekka Nurmi, the director of Finland’s Accident Investigation Board, said the fire was able to spread quickly through the building because the pipe ducts and cables were not fitted with proper seals.

A total of 168 staff members and patients, some of which were still in their hospital beds and under anaesthetic, had to be evacuated in the early hours of the morning when the automatic fire alarm sounded. There were no fatalities, but three hospital workers had to be treated for smoke inhalation.

With police and rescue personnel assisting the Investigation Board, it was concluded on Saturday where the fire started, but not how. “An electric cable was probably already damaged or the short circuit occurred at a poorly soldered contact,” Nurmi said. He added to YLE that “cat-size” openings across the building prevented the fire doors from containing the blaze.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of euros will be needed for the repairs to the building, which contained a trauma ward, accident & emergency department and two medicine departments. The hospital’s insurance companies will be charged with picking up the tab.

Juha Rantasalo, technical director for the Turku University Hospital, said, “It is a pity building inspectors did not have the same knowledge on safety issues 20 to 30 years ago as they do today.” He added, however, that the construction company cannot be held responsible for the disaster.

As previously reported on IceNews, the babies’ mother tragically died in labour and left the twins fighting for their lives in hospital. One of them lost that battle on Saturday. It was initially reported that the mother had died of a lung embolism.

The baby will be buried, along with her mother, at Reykjavik’s Grafarvogskirkja church on Monday.

The twin sisters were born on Sunday 14th August and a Facebook message quickly went viral, calling on people to pray for the babies, their father and their two older siblings.

Friends and relatives opened a collection for the devastated family which everybody is welcome to contribute to.

(Account: 0322-13-700345, Gísli Kr. Björnsson, kennitala: 080171-5529)

A temporary secretary, who worked at the Haartman facility for just four months last spring, is suspected of data protection crimes after gaining unauthorised access to the electronic records of 188 patients.

The secretary was sacked as soon as the violation was discovered, but the victims are only just being informed of it now. The Data Protection Ombudsman said such offences are becoming increasingly common in Finland.

Speaking to YLE, Seppo Saarela from Helsinki described the letter he received from the Haartman accident and emergency hospital last week. ”A secretary working at the city hospital had opened my case history file and could have seen my patient record,” he said. ”The department’s secretary did not have the right to open the case history file. It feels like that any summer intern can get into Haartman hospital’s database. Unbelievable!”

Jukka Toivonen, the hospital’s chief physician, said, “Helsinki health services decided to notify all those whose names we know. Altogether, 188 of these letters have been sent. We have no information about the motive. It could have been just curiosity. Police are investigating this too.”

DV reports that two people are in a very serious condition at Reykjavik’s Landspitali hospital following yesterday’s accident at Vididalur. According to hospital sources, one man received emergency surgery due to head injuries incurred in the accident and another is in intensive care. One other person is in a general ward.

A total of 11 people were taken to hospital after the crash; nine by helicopter and two by ambulance. However, the majority of the patients were allowed to leave hospital yesterday evening.

Two of the three cars contained foreign tourists and Icelanders were in the third car. Nothing more is yet known about what caused the accident on Route 1 near Grof. The road was closed for much of yesterday because the accident debris took up both lanes. It was soon re-opened, however.

Luckily nobody died in yesterday’s crash. Six people have died on Iceland’s roads so far this year. 31 people died in 2006; but that figure has been significantly lower each year since. Just eight people died in traffic accidents in 2010.

Gudbjartur Hannesson, the Icelandic Minister of Health says he is investigating whether it is necessary to make as big cuts to the Westfjords health budget as had been previously announced. He warns though, that any decision he makes will still need to be passed by parliament, RUV reports.

As previously reported on IceNews, residents of the Westfjords have been protesting the cutbacks angrily. Among the cutbacks proposed is a roughly 42 percent cut to funding for the regional hospital in Isafjordur. Doctors and managers at the hospital claim that would mean the effective closure of the hospital. They added that due to the geography and weather in the region and that the Westfjords has a fragile transport infrastructure, the cut backs could actually put lives at risk when it is not possible to move patients to Reykjavik.

Meanwhile, a new report commissioned by Westfjords locals and written by engineer Dora Hlin Gisladottir and economist Kristinn Hermannsson, claims that the state will save little or no money by cutting funding to the Isafjordur hospital.

The main reasons the cutbacks will have little effect, according to the report, are vastly increased patient transport costs, lower tax revenues and higher payments to Reykjavik’s Landspitali hospital for taking on the extra work. At best the state can hope to save ISK 28 million from its ISK 185 million cutback, the report claims.

The head of Landspitali, Bjorn Zoega, told RUV that heart patients may need to be treated overseas if the situation does not improve soon.

Zoega added that if the intense pressure on the hospital is maintained, there will come a breaking point eventually. No services at the hospital have been discontinued in recent years – although a lot has been changed, re-organised and scaled back. The next step could have to be the closure of some departments, which would mean sending some patients to other countries for treatment. The state would not save any money if that happened, Zoega said.

The man was described as being in a strange mental situation and under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.

If his choice of crash site was deliberate, it did not work. He was arrested on site and taken to a police cell where the reason for his crash did not become clear.

Despite breaking the big window and stopping his car in the department’s waiting room, nobody was hurt, Visir.is reports.

One in every four medical positions in Greenland is currently unmanned, RUV reports. This situation means that Iceland should look very carefully at sending medical staff to work for set temporary periods in Greenland, Ingvarsson said.

The Greenlandic health minister and an entourage have been in Iceland for the last few days being introduced to the Icelandic healthcare system; both in Reykjavik and Akureyri. Thorvaldur Ingvarsson says that Iceland’s health service could be very useful to Greenland.

The assistance could come in the form of staff exchanges between the two countries or the “rental” of Icelandic staff to Greenland. It is also thought that serious medical procedures on Greenlanders could halve in cost if performed in Iceland instead of in Denmark.

The statement calls for the construction to be financed by the pension funds and for the government to then rent the premises. Work will begin in 2010 for architects and engineers involved in designing and preparing the project; but the vast majority of jobs created will come in 2013-2015 when construction is in full swing.

The projected total construction cost is around ISK 33 billion (USD 264.6 million). The figure includes ISK 7 billion for various hospital equipment and ISK 11 billion for redesign and rebuilding of old hospital premises. The new hospital will cover some 66,000 square metres in three main sites.

Visir.is reports that he is now on the road to a slow recovery and has been taken off the life support machine. He remains in the intensive care unit at Fossvogur hospital in Reykjavik.

Halldor Asgrimsson is the current Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers and was Prime Minister of Iceland from 2004 to 2006. He became PM due to a deal struck when his party agreed to enter a coalition with the Independence Party of David Oddsson. Oddsson was Prime Minister during the first half of the term. Asgrimsson was chairman of the Progressive Party from 1994 to 2006.