MUMBAI:
Thirty-five-year-old Mohammad Ismail was fast asleep when he heard a
loud thud around 5.30 am. He woke up to tremors and found a heavy
blanket of smoke obstructing his vision and immediately realised there
was something amiss. He did not waste a single moment, woke up his
62-year-old uncle, Abdul Rashid, and rushed downstairs with him. "I saw
the smoke, heard the sound and put two and two together and realised
what was happening," Ismail said, describing his flight down the stairs
of the portion of Sayyed House that survived.
But most of his neighbours, including his uncle, was not as sure as
Ismail about what was happening. "I did not know what was happening,"
Rashid admitted. "My nephew woke me up and told me to start running. My
heart was in my mouth till I climbed down two floors and reached the
ground floor," Rashid said.
Others in the building were woken up by the shrieks of those who were
sleeping in its rear portion and ran out of their homes, bleary-eyed.
"I heard my cousin, Umran, scream. I could also hear the cries of his
children. So I ran down from my third-floor home along with my son,"
Sayyed Ruman Fauzan said. "We saw the building's rear portion come
crashing down as soon as we reached downstairs. We had a lucky escape,"
she added.
Fauzan Sayyed, another of Salman's and Umran's brothers, who slept in
the front portion of the building, was lucky not to have been there at
all. "I have a clinic at Cheetah Camp and stayed there last night. I
got a call from my relatives early in the morning and came rushing
here," he added.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Mumbai/Bleary-eyed_residents_wake_up_to_disaster/
articleshow/3706976.cms
Copyright
© 2008 Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd.
