‘Never thought would come out alive’
Badsha Faisal, a survivor of the Banani high-rise building fire, narrates his three-hour-long battle for survival.
Faisal was working on the 12th floor of the 22-storey FR Tower when the fire broke out around 1:20pm.
As thick smoke started to permeate the entire establishment, Faisal, who works at a firm, called his father. “My father asked me not to jump off the building and take shelter on the roof,” said Faisal, who is now undergoing treatment at the medicine ward of Kurmitola General Hospital.
“I tried to go to the roof, but the thick smoke blurred my vision and was having difficulty to breath. My skin was seething and all I wanted get out of the inferno,” sad Faisal, a resident of Dhaka’s Banasree area.
“I along with four others huddled up in a nook on the 12th floor and was waiting for rescuers,” he said.
Around 3:45pm, Faisal was rescued along with the four other survivors by firefighters.
Faisal, who was seen wheezing and coughing at the hospital bed, says with an emotion choked voice, “I never thought that I would come out alive.”
Meanwhile, Ishtiak Mahmud, a human resource executive at Empire Group based in the ill-fated skyscraper, also gave an identical narrative of nerve-wrecking battle for survival.
The victims are in a state of shock and trauma, said Dr Mahfuza Mili, an indoor medical officer at the medicine ward of Kurmitola General Hospital.
Most of the victims are suffering from breathing complications as they inhaled the smoke, she said.
At least 19 persons, including a Sri Lankan citizen, were killed and 70 others injured in a fire that broke out at FR Tower in Dhaka’s Banani area this afternoon.
Of the injured, 41 people were admitted to Kurmitola hospital and four others were taken to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital.
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