Ladders, saree pulleys: Neighbours turn rescuers after fire at building in Delhi's Tughlakabad

AGo off that skint come out in a five-storey residential edifice in Tughlakabad file name extension in the early hours of Friday caught most residents by surprise, but quick thinking by some onlookers and families living in the locality helped save many lives during the incident, according to eyewitnesses and officers who subsequently arrived at the scene.As smoke billowed out of the building, people started setting up mattresses to break the fall of those jumping from the upper floors, putting out vehicles that caught fire to prevent blasts and taking measures for officials to access smoke-filled corridors. Among them was Saurav Sharma, 35, and his 16-year-old daughter Anshu, whose quick thinking helped save a man’s life. Sharma, who lives on the third floor of the building directly opposite the one where the fire broke out, said his daughter woke him up as soon as she heard screams for help.“When I woke up, I went to my balcony and saw the fire on the ground floor. We saw a man in the affected building on the second floor shouting for help. My daughter quickly grabbed my wife’s saree and threw it towards him. He tied it around the railing of his balcony and climbed down,” he said.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 severe injuries. Two other family members and three residents of the fifth floor were also injured, officials said.According to police, the fire started in the parking area on the ground floor, suspected to have been triggered by a short circuit while an electric scooter was being charged, with the smoke quickly engulfing the entire building. Officials aware of the matter said the fifth floor of the building had been illegally constructed.Residents of the neighbourhood said that within minutes of the fire breaking out, at around 2.15am, the entire lane was filled with smoke.Sharma was among the first people to call the police and the fire department. “A few others and I started dousing the fire using buckets, but it was in vain. The fire was brought under control only after the fire department arrived. Meanwhile, we tried to rescue those trapped in the rear portion of the building,” he said.A Delhi Fire Service (DFS) official said that locals had already rescued a few people by the time they reached. “People on the first, second and third floors were rescued by neighbours. We doused the fire and then started the operation. Simultaneously, another team went to the roof and tried to rescue people from the upper floors. Unfortunately, five people on the fourth floor sustained critical injuries,” the official said.Another resident who was at the forefront of the rescue operation was 45-year-old Renu Bhutani, who said she was watching crime dramas late into the night.“The smoke was so thick that it was impossible to enter through the front entrance. My son and I entered through the terrace of the building behind this one. Since that building is only two storeys high and this one has five storeys, we tied two wooden ladders and climbed onto the roof of the affected building, while two other people held the ladder to ensure we didn’t fall,” she said.“My son broke open the locked door and clouds of extremely dense smoke instantly hit us. We used stones to puncture the water tanks on the roof so that the water could flow down the stairs, reduce the smoke and hopefully, quell the fire,” Bhutani said.Bhutani said they drenched themselves in water and entered the building.“We found two girls on the fifth floor, who escaped the same way we had entered, and another couple on the third floor, whom we had to rescue by breaking down the door to their flat with a drill cutter. They jumped onto the neighbouring house at the rear, which was very close because the lanes are extremely cramped,” she said.Bhutani said they also heard two women who were trapped further down, but they were unable to access the first and second floors because of the extremely thick smoke on the lower floors.“Fortunately, the firefighters had arrived by then and took over,” she said.Krishna Kashyap, 16, a neighbour and an eyewitness, said screams for help alerted residents and prompted the entire locality to rush to assist.“My brother was among the people who caught the man who climbed down. They did it with nothing but their hands. Since we live in the adjacent building, I was speaking to the trapped people from my roof to find out where they were inside the building. The problem is that there is no ventilation in the building; many of the newer buildings being constructed are similar,” he said.