Dozens of people died in a fire at an apartment block in Hanoi, Vietnamese state media said yesterday, with witnesses reporting screams from inside and a small boy thrown from the building.
The fire started just before midnight on Tuesday in the parking floor of the 10-floor building, an area packed with motorbikes, witnesses said.
More than 100 people managed to escape or were pulled from the building by rescuers, with authorities rushing 54 to hospital, including “dozens of dead,” the Vietnam News Agency said.
Photo by AFP
At least three children were among the dead, online state newspaper Viettimes reported.
“I heard a lot of shouts for help. We could not help them much,” said Hoa, a woman who lives near the block and gave only one name.
“The apartment is so closed with no escape route, impossible for the victims to get out,” she said.
Photo: AFP
The blaze was out by yesterday morning, but rescuers still struggled for hours thereafter to access the building, which is down a narrow alley in a residential area of southwest Hanoi.
The complex’s small balconies were surrounded by iron bars, with the apartment block having only a single exit — and no emergency ladder on the outside.
About 150 people lived in the complex, authorities said.
Another witness, Huong, said a small boy was thrown from a high floor to help him escape the flames.
“I was about to sleep when I smelled something. I went outside and saw the fire,” she said.
“The smoke was everywhere. There was a little boy thrown from a high floor; I do not know whether he survived or not although people used a mattress to catch him,” she said.
Neighbours reported several others jumping from the block.
“There was a middle-aged woman jumping down onto my terrace here. She hit her arm and broke it. Another person also jumped down here and broke their legs,” Dao To Nga said. “A child was put into a plastic basket and lowered down.”
Some were able to flee the building using her roof.
“This rooftop of my family helped 14 to 15 people escape,” she said.
One survivor, Nguyen Thi Minh Hong, said that her family waited in their seventh-floor apartment at the back of the building for five hours before help arrived.
“We were sleeping when suddenly we felt very hot because the power had been cut. My husband opened the door and we heard people shouting for help and we saw smoke,” the 34-year-old said.
The family, which included her two children aged six and nine, tried to escape to the roof but were forced back into their apartment due to the heat of the fire.
“I was so scared. We stayed inside the room for five hours... I just tried to calm my kids down by holding a wet towel to their face,” she said from Hanoi’s Bach Mai Hospital. “We were between life and death.”
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