NEARLY a week after a major fire at Winchester’s Royal Hampshire County Hospital, a burnt-out MRI scanner is still a ticking time bomb.

An investigation into what sparked the blaze which ripped through the building housing an £800,000 MRI scanner and two CT scanners on Friday is still delayed because of safety concerns.

Fire crews and police were still on standby yesterday morning in case a blast of helium gas escapes from the scanner and causes the collapse of a badly-damaged building housing the equipment.

No one was injured in the fire, which started in a building just a few yards from where TV presenter and gardener Alan Titchmarsh opened a new interventional and fluoroscopy unit yesterday.

He praised the hospital for bouncing back from adversity.

Mr Titchmarsh, a deputy lieutenant of Hampshire, said: “To see what staff have done in such a short space of time is incredibly praiseworthy.

“It says a tremendous amount about the individuals who work here who are making sure the hospital stays open and continues to offer services to the population.”

Fluoroscopy allows moving functions in the body to be X-rayed, for example dye moving through veins or swallowing.

The £600,000 Siemens ‘Artis Zee’ scanner took six weeks to install and provides improved image quality for a variety of procedures, including fitting pacemakers, chemotherapy and stone removals.

The area around where the fire started remains cordoned off.

Helium is not explosive but pressure from the build-up of gas inside the damaged metal scanner could cause it to explode, say hospital officials.

Christine Saunders, medical imaging manager, said: “We expect it to fizz and go off with an almighty bang, which because of the debris could take the roof off and make the rest of the building collapse because it is already structurally unstable.

“We have police and the fire service on standby.

“This is a unique situation which will have worldwide implications because it has never happened before.

“It is so rare, people will learn from it in the design of future MRI scanners.”

Two emergency buttons that should have allowed the gas to escape via a vent were damaged in the fire.

One was in the control room and the other on the scanner.

Ms Saunders said engineers believed helium gas was escaping “little by little”

but it could take weeks.

As reported, Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service is waiting to start the investigation until after the giant electromagnet is deactivated.

Concerns include the potential risk of suffocation in the scanner room as helium gas reduces oxygen in the air.

Dr Chris Gordon, acting chief executive of Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare Trust, which runs the Royal Hampshire County Hospital, said the cost of repairing the damage was expected to run “into millions of pounds”.

The hospital boss said: “It has been extremely traumatic for staff but they have gone from great anxiety on Friday to relief that it was not as bad as initially feared and we are able to get services up and running.”