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I just feel guilty at surviving while neighbours have died
6 Jul 2009As harrowing accounts of the blaze emerged, one survivor told of his feeling of guilt at escaping from a tiny bathroom where five neighbours died.
Rasheed Nuhu said it was “traumatising” to know that the people with whom he sought refuge from the flames engulfing the tower block perished while he escaped alive.
The father of two was at home with wife Fatima, 40, and children Mariam, three, and Yashima, 18 months, when the fire broke out. The couple gave shelter to another neighbour, Helen Udoaka, 34, and her three-week-old baby Michelle. But when their 11th-floor flat filled with smoke, they all hid in the bathroom of his next-door neighbour Dayana Francisquini, along with her son Felipe, three, and daughter Thais, six.
Mr Nuhu's family managed to escape to the balcony and were rescued, but the five left behind died, along with fashion designer Catherine Hickman, 31, who also lived on the 11th floor.
Mr Nuhu, 47, said: “The trauma that has come out of all of this is almost indescribable. Knowing the people we were in there together with died, we could have stayed in there.
“I did not go outside to try to get away myself. I went out to do something, to be ready when the need arose.
“Because of the fireball I saw I had to do something. Obviously it's very traumatising and I'm still trying to come to terms with that.”
Mr Nuhu, whose dramatic escape with his family was filmed by onlookers, criticised the emergency services' response and said he had to wait an hour and a half to be rescued.
“I was expecting things like a helicopter to come and drop a ladder or commando-type rescuer,” he said. “The moment I thought, We're not going to get out of this', was when the ladder could not reach where we were. That's when I thought there was no chance. I thought this was the end.”
His emotional account of the tragic events came as Mrs Francisquini's husband Rafael Cervi told how she called him moments before she died, telling him she was struggling to breathe. He said: “They were what I lived for. Now everything is gone and I have nothing,”
Mr Cervi, 31, who stood outside the flats after racing home from work, told his wife to hide in the bathroom and put wet towels under the door.
But by the time firemen reached their flat, Mrs Francisquini, 26, and their two children had been overcome by smoke and died later in hospital.
The hotel porter from Brazil said that in a second call to his terrified wife she told him the power supply had gone. He told how she said: “I can't breathe very well. I'm struggling to breathe and Felipe's really scared.”
They were the last words he heard from her. When he tried to ring her again there was no answer.
Mr Cervi said: “My children were angels to me. I've lost my babies and my beautiful wife. They died together and I want to get them together and fly them home to Brazil where they can all be buried in the same grave. When I die I'll be buried there too.”
Mr Cervi criticised the fire brigade's “unwillingness” to attempt to reach his family's flat sooner.
“They had masks and oxygen and there were no flames in my flat,” he said. “Why couldn't they go in? If you want a safe job, be a bank manager.”
Mbet Udoaka, 37, also had to watch helplessly as his wife and baby died in the fire. Helen called him to say she was trapped in their flat on the 11th floor and he raced home from work.
He stayed on the phone until she lost consciousness, but was not allowed to enter the burning building.
Miss Hickman's boyfriend Mark Bailey, 32, said he flew home from New York when he heard about the blaze and added that he had intended to propose on his return.
“She was saintly, the most generous, beautiful girl I ever met,” he said. “I don't know how to live without her.”
