Panicked, they jumped to death

It was a warm evening in Dhaka's upscale Gulshan area, with most of the residents of house number 2 on road 104 at home after a hectic Sunday. All of a sudden, they felt the air was heating up and heard people screaming 'fire, fire!', prompting them to frantically rush to all directions – the lifts, balconies and stairs.

Some residents were seen jumping off the building, some rushing to the top floors, while others were trapped in balconies of different floors, pleading to be rescued.

Eyewitnesses saw whirling flames shooting out of windows as the blaze quickly spread throughout the building and people stuck in the building desperately tried to draw firefighters' attention.

The fire service ladder arrived after a while, but many had already feared the worst for their lives. After four hours of tension and fear, the firefighters were able to rescue most residents unscathed. However, two people died and four others were severely injured, sustaining fire burns and jumping off the building.

A senior fire service official said that if they had not jumped, perhaps they too could have been rescued.

"We repeatedly requested them not to jump off the building as we were nearly there to rescue them as well. However, they must have been frightened or were not aware of the firefighters' response and they panicked. They jumped off the building and died," said Lt Col Mohammad Tajul Islam Chowdhury, director (operations and maintenance) of the Department of Fire Service and Civil Defence.

"It's a modern architectural building, but we observed there are a few faults and mismanagement is still there," said the official, who is also chief of the probe body formed over the fire incidents.

"Most elements of the interior decor are flammable and that also could have ignited the fire," he added after visiting the building on Sunday afternoon.

Urging people to learn from the incident, he said, "We have rescued 22 lives and you have seen how the firefighters saved people's lives by putting their own lives at risk."

Mohammad Razu, 30, one of the two who died in the small hours of Sunday at a Dhaka private hospital, was working at the 11th floor apartment of Faim Sinha, director of Bangladesh Cricket Board. Raju jumped off from the balcony but couldn't save his life. The other casualty Anwar Hossain, who hails from Bhola, also died after jumping off the building.

A photo of the tragic incident went viral that shows a firefighter rescuing an infant who was stuck on the eleventh floor of that building. Rashed, the firefighter of Baridhara fire station, told TBS that after 10:30pm they could reach the eleventh floor and saw a man sitting at a corner with a child in his lap.

"We couldn't reach them at the first attempt. We had to break the glass and then managed to get close to them and finally could rescue the toddler, who was just a few months old," said Rashed.