A WOMAN died in a fire in a residential building in Gudaibiya – but a brave and quick-thinking Bahraini man risked his life and battled flames to rescue a baby and an elderly woman.
Eight vehicles and 26 Civil Defence personnel were deployed to douse the blaze in the two-storey building at around 9pm on Tuesday.
The GDN reported yesterday that residents of the building were evacuated as firemen extinguished the blaze.
The Interior Ministry said on its Twitter account that an investigation had been launched to determine the cause of the fire.
The deceased woman succumbed to suffocation, it added, without providing any further details.
“It was around 9.10pm when my nephew came to me, screaming that there was a fire in the building near our house,” said Bahraini Jassim Mohammed.
“I rushed out and looked up at the building and saw black smoke and flames emanating from the ground floor,” the government employee told the GDN yesterday.
“I also saw an elderly woman in her 60s and a baby screaming from a window on the first floor.
“I was wearing a thobe. I ran into my house, changed, came out and I immediately climbed up on the water tank and window air conditioner. I grabbed the baby and lowered him to passers-by.
“The elderly woman was terrified and I felt the extreme heat from the flames so I tried to convince her to come out through the window and passers-by placed a ladder to help me bring her down.”
According to Mr Mohammed, extreme heat was emanating from the building prompting him to use bricks to break the glass panels in the building entrance to allow heat to escape and for ventilation.
He added that as flames raged in the building, first-floor residents – Asians and Africans – were seen jumping from the windows to escape the fire.
“We took the elderly woman and the nine-month old baby boy – both expatriates – to my home where we gave them food, water and checked on their health before authorities took them to a shelter,” added Mr Mohammed.
“While I was rescuing them from the window we heard a woman screaming on a higher floor. She was yelling, ‘Help help’, so we went to the neighbouring building to try and rescue her but the smoke was so black and thick.
“We tried to see if we could get her to jump from the roof to the neighbouring building but by the time we made it up her screams had stopped and the Civil Defence later found her body.
“The Civil Defence and Interior Ministry personnel spared no efforts to combat these flames and save everyone’s lives and the death was an unfortunate outcome.”
Meanwhile, a Filipino resident told the GDN that he was having dinner with his wife when he heard loud knocking on their door followed by screams.
He added that the flames were fast spreading with dense black smoke.
reem@gdnmedia.bh
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