A fire broke out in a five-storey residential building in Tughlaqabad Extension in the early hours of Friday, catching most residents by surprise, but quick thinking by some onlookers and families living in the area helped save several lives during the incident, according to eyewitnesses and officers who later arrived at the scene.
As smoke billowed from the building, people began laying down mattresses to prevent the fall of those jumping from the upper floors, extinguishing vehicles that caught fire to prevent explosions, and taking measures to enable officials to access smoke-filled corridors.
They included Sourav Sharma, 35, and his 16-year-old daughter Anshu, whose quick thinking helped save the man’s life. Sharma, who lives on the third floor of the building directly opposite the building where the fire broke out, said his daughter woke him up as soon as she heard screaming for help.
He said: “When I woke up, I went to my balcony and saw the fire on the ground floor. We saw a man in the damaged building on the second floor screaming for help. My daughter quickly grabbed my wife’s sari and threw it towards him. He tied it around the fence of his balcony and came down.”
Three people – 28-year-old Pankaj Pandey, his grandmother Sushila Devi, 70, and his sister Soni, 20 – died in the fire on Friday, while two other family members – who were all on the fourth floor – suffered serious injuries. Two other family members and three residents of the fifth floor were also injured, officials said.
According to police, the fire broke out in the parking area on the ground floor, and was suspected to have been caused by an electrical short while charging an electric motorcycle, and smoke quickly engulfed the entire building. Officials familiar with the matter said that the fifth floor of the building was constructed illegally.
Within minutes of the fire starting, around 2:15 a.m., the entire corridor was filled with smoke, neighborhood residents said.
Sharma was among the first people to call the police and fire department. “I and a few others started to extinguish the fire using buckets, but to no avail. The fire was brought under control only after the fire department arrived. Meanwhile, we tried to rescue those trapped at the back of the building,” he said.
A Delhi Fire Service (DFS) official said locals had already rescued a few people by the time they reached them. “The people on the first, second and third floors were rescued by neighbors. We put out the fire and then started the operation. Meanwhile, another team went up to the roof and tried to rescue people from the upper floors. Unfortunately, five people on the fourth floor were seriously injured,” the official said.
Another resident at the forefront of the rescue operation is 45-year-old Renu Bhutani, who said she had been watching crime dramas late at night.
She said: “The smoke was so thick that it was impossible to enter from the front entrance. My son and I entered through the balcony of the building located behind this building. Since this building has only two floors and this building has five floors, we tied two wooden ladders and climbed to the roof of the damaged building, while two other people held the ladder to ensure we would not fall.”
“My son opened the closed door, and we were immediately hit by clouds of very thick smoke,” Bhutani said. “We used stones to puncture the water tanks on the roof so that the water would flow down the stairs, reduce the smoke, and hopefully we could put out the fire.”
Bhutani said they doused themselves with water and entered the building.
“We found two girls on the fifth floor, who escaped the same way we entered, and another couple on the third floor, whom we had to rescue by breaking down the door of their apartment using a drill tool,” she said. “They jumped into the house next door at the back, which was very close because the hallways are very narrow.”
Bhutani said she also heard two women trapped in the basement, but they were unable to reach the first and second floors due to the very thick smoke in the lower floors.
“Fortunately, firefighters arrived at that time and took over,” she said.
Krishna Kashyap, 16, a neighbor and eyewitness, said the cries for help alerted residents and prompted the entire area to rush to help.
He said: “My brother was among the people who caught the man who climbed. They only did it with their hands. Since we live in the building next door, I was talking to the trapped people from the roof of my house to find out where they were inside the building. The problem is that there is no ventilation in the building; many new buildings being constructed are similar.”
