On Friday, Nov 25, 2009, I came to the office to spend a quiet day preparing client proposals. I was having a discussion with one of our people, when around 11:00 AM I saw smoke and flames coming out of the window in a building across the street.
“Call 112,” I screamed and ran to see what was going on. I stormed into the building and knocked on the door of the apartment that was on fire. No answer. Fortunately, the door was not locked, so I opened it.
Thick black smoke filled the entire place and flames were projecting from the room on the right (as it turned out later, the kitchen).
“Anybody there? Get out of here, quickly!” A wobbling figure appeared in the dark, uttering unintelligible noises. The guy was completely drunk.
“Get out of here, quickly, or you’re going to die!” No answer. “How many people are there here?” No answer. I pushed him out of the smoke-filled inferno and jumped inside to find out how many people were inside. It looked like they were having a party there and had all fallen asleep, leaving a naked flame that caused the fire.
Three more people were inside, all of them completely drunk, including a woman. The last guy was totally naked and refused to leave the apartment, even though flames were almost leaking his butt. “I can’t go out, I’m naked”, he muttered. I didn’t try to explain but just pushed him towards the door.
I couldn’t see if there was anybody else in the apartment and it was not a good idea to keep searching as flames were getting really serious. The survivors kind of convinced me there were only four of them inside. I hoped they were right.
Before the fire brigade arrived, I managed to run up the stairway, knocking on every door, getting people to leave the building. A
The smoke on the 3rd floor was getting very thick when the firemen arrived from the nearby National Fire Brigade Academy (1.2 km per Google Maps). Took them longer to drive than to come on foot.
See it on Google Maps.
Not much in the news, because nobody was hurt:
