Bedsheets, mattresses, courage: How Zakir Nagar locals saved 35 lives

The fire broke out around 2.15 am in the parking lot of the four-storey building in south Delhi’s Zakir Nagar, killing six people, gutting seven cars and a dozen motorcycles in the process.

As a woman prepared to leap from the third floor of a burning building in south Delhi’s Zakir Nagar early Tuesday, a group of men holding a bed sheet waited below to break her fall. Moments later, the rescuers realised that their effort may have saved not one, but two lives.

People look at the charred remains of a building where a massive fire broke out, at Zakir Nagar area, in New Delhi, Tuesday, Aug 6, 2019. (PTI)

Before the woman had taken the leap, she had fastened her toddler son to her back using a dupatta.

“The bedsheet couldn’t hold the woman and she fell through the sheet and injured her head, but we managed to catch her son by his leg in the nick of time. He escaped unharmed,” said Nazim Saifi, a local carpenter.

While that woman continues to battle for her life along with many others at the Holy Family Hospital, six others died in the blaze despite over two hours of dramatic rescue efforts by the local residents.

When the fire broke out around 2.15 am in the parking lot of the four-storey building, gutting seven cars and a dozen motorcycles in the process, the first response of the residents was to call the authorities and arrange ladders.

“Six of us on the first floor were suffocating from the smoke, but we managed to escape through the balcony using ladders,” said Junaid, who owns a godown in the congested neighbourhood.

The rescuers soon realised that ladders alone wouldn’t suffice. The burning vehicles in the stilt parking had blocked the building’s exit and dense smoke had flooded the staircase. “There are two doors leading to the building’s terrace. Both were locked from inside,” said Zeeshan Khan, a neighbour.

Left with no escape route, most of the 40-odd occupants of the building huddled in their balconies even as their small flats began getting engulfed in smoke. It was at that time that the locals came out with bed sheets, which soon seemed ineffective in breaking their fall.

So they began collecting mattresses from their homes. “But before we could collect the mattresses and place them on the road below, two women had already panicked and jumped. Both died on the spot. We urged others not to leap till we had placed the mattresses, but our shouts were lost in the din,” said carpenter Saifi.

The mattresses did help save a few more people, but the thick smoke that filled the lane too soon obscured it from others who were looking to jump from the floors above. “People were landing on hard ground instead of on the mattresses,” said Asif Khan, a neighbour.

So, the residents got on to an adjacent building. While one group emptied water tanks to try and douse the flames, another decided to break open holes into the wall of the third and fourth floor of the building.

“We formed two groups and used hammers and chisels to break two holes in the wall, one on the third floor and another on the fourth floor. It took us about 15-20 minutes,” said Nishant Khan, a businessman.

But when the rescuers, that also included two fire fighters, entered the two flats, they found about a dozen people inside. Most of them were either unconscious, some were probably dead. It had been nearly two hours since the fire began.

“I saw a body charred. His limbs were spread out and stiff. When I touched him, his skin came off and his bone showed. I was frightened and ran out,” said Asif Khan who too suffered burns to his back during the rescue.

The situation inside the two flats was such within two hours that the two fire fighters who first entered the flats through the holes ended up unconscious. “We masked ourselves with handkerchiefs and continued the rescue,” said Nishant Khan, a businessman.

All this while, blasts were happening in the building, some of them in the cooking gas cylinders and most of them in the vehicles parked on the ground floor. But what the residents were afraid of was the continuing power supply to the house.

“For an hour, the power supply to the neighbourhood was not shut down despite repeated calls. We were afraid to go in, lest we be electrocuted,” alleged Shahbab Saif, a neighbour who claimed to finally climb the transformer and turn off the power.

The power providing company, BSES, however, denied the allegations and said that a linesman deployed by them turned off the power after a call was received.