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Students who just escaped the fire, office staff and locals: A chain of people with the help of firefighters fetched ropes, water bottles, mattresses and ladders to help rescue those trapped inside the three-storey building in Mukherjee Nagar where the fire broke out on Thursday afternoon.
The building houses several UPSC training centers.
Seeing the panicked students standing on the windowsills, their groupmates bought ropes from nearby stores and tied one end to a balcony or window. A few of them stood below to catch anyone trying to jump while others put their bags on the ground to serve as a landing pad.
Ajay Dixit, 19, who has been studying at the Sanskriti IAS Training Center for two months, said he was attending a history class downstairs when he saw thick smoke coming from the ground floor.
“I quickly rushed outside with others… We saw several students on the upper floors screaming in panic and looking for a way to escape… We bought a rope and told a friend to go up to the third floor. He went up to the window sill, grabbed one end of the rope and asked The students going down… I would hold him to the ground… We tried to calm their fears because they were panicking a lot,” recalls Ajay.
He added that he and several other people helped carry the injured students to the ambulance: “We brought water bottles for them because they were suffocating inside the building… Most of them were barely able to breathe or were coughing… Stairs were also arranged by us.”
Paoan, 20, who was attending a lesson on the third floor and narrowly escaped the fire, quickly began arranging blankets and mattresses so that those stuck on the upper floors could descend safely and unharmed.
“Some of us went back upstairs and helped the students climb the ropes… We couldn’t see anything as the smoke was all over the building and there was a stampede on the stairs, but there was a union between those on the ground rescuing the victims.”
Recalling how one of the victims was bleeding from her head after being hit by an air conditioner compressor, Aman said, “I was very worried for her because she was seriously injured…
on the rope but lost her grip and fell… her head hit the compressor.”
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