SIXTY patients were evacuated from a hospital after a fire was started in the recreation room of a psychiatric unit.
A 19-year-old patient was helping police with inquiries last night, after the blaze at Gateshead's Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
The alarm was raised at about 10.50am yesterday, when emergency services responded to a report of a fire in a room on the Eighton Ward of the hospital's Tranwell Unit.
Patients, some with psychiatric problems, were evacuated from the ward and surrounding buildings, because of the fire and smoke, which spread from the recreation room.
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