Smoke causes hospital evacuation

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee(WDEF) – A fire alarm at a downtown hospital triggered an all-hand-on deck evacuation of the patients.

It happened at the Kindred Hospital in the 700 block of Walnut Street.

According to authorities, fire crews were sent to the hospital to investigate why the alarm went off. But once crew arrived, they detected smoke in the upper level of the hospital.

Within minutes, multiple crews were called in to help evacuate hospital patients.

Fire department spokesman Bruce Garner told WDEF the evacuation was a major effort that took lots of coordination.

"It’s a big task to evacuate a hospital. As you can image, many of them are in hospital beds so that’s why they called in for additional man power with the fire department. extra fire companies; So we had firefighters, EMS personnel and hospital staff assisting," Garner said.

There were no reports of any injures.