The desperation of a family in a fire in Madrid: “The parents said they were going to throw the children out the window”

Clara recorded the sequence from her windowNIUSEThe fire originated in a third floor room where there were five peopleThe children are two months, two years old and nine: their evacuation is a priority”I opened the door and found all the black smoke filling the house”, says Hao Sun”I was in the dining room with my daughter and my wife’s sister. She was bathing the little one. Suddenly I heard a noise as if glass was breaking. My wife? I opened the door and found all the black smoke filling the house,” says Hao Sun, 23, of Chinese origin. It was nine o’clock on Monday night when a fire broke out in her living room, a third floor on Cristo de la Victoria street, in the Madrid district of Usera. What scared her the most was getting intoxicated by the smoke. Last week two children died in the region after another fire broke out in the town of Alcorcón. The young man has a two-year-old daughter and a two-month-old baby. His nine-year-old niece also resides at home. She couldn’t open the door to go outside. It was locked. “I started looking for something to cover the hole in the door but I didn’t have time. My little one has a disease -bronchiolitis- and he can’t swallow a lot of smoke. I wet a blanket to cover his mouth and body. I opened the windows of the house , we stuck our heads out to get some fresh air and waited for the firemen to come,” she narrates calmly. Clara lives in the building across the street. He recorded the entire sequence: “I was having dinner when I heard people screaming. I went out to look out the window with my family and we started to see smoke coming out of our neighbors’ window. We told the whole block for security and we went outside. The family was seen leaning out the window with such desperation that the parents even said to throw the children out the window. Soon the firefighters arrived, “he tells NIUS. Rescue of minors “There are children upstairs! The ladder!” the firefighters shouted when they arrived at the building. The awning on the terrace was a ball of fire. The family made signs with a towel to indicate where they were, something essential to facilitate their rescue. “If it is a very high floor, we are not going to be able to hear the screams well. If they take out a towel or a t-shirt, they are more visible and they indicate to us where they are. When we arrive, we always check how the four facades are. We will prioritize rescues in the areas that are most affected by smoke. If there is a lot of smoke, we will put rescue respiratory protection equipment on them. It is like a hood that supplies clean air with a bottle, “they explain. Facade rescues are done with a ladder. These can cover a range of between 20 and 50 meters in height. The Madrid City Council also has articulated arms to reach a higher distance. “We have a limitation of the people we can load in the basket. In the event of a rescue with adults and minors involved, we will be able to rescue a greater number of children, due to their lower weight. Therefore, we will load them onto the platform earlier. Then we make a ‘rescue wheel’ with the same auto-scale. We lower people to a safe area and then we go back for another one, “they point out. When there is a large number of people to evacuate, the ladder can also be supported on the façade -for example on a balcony- and carry out a ‘bridge-type’ rescue. Two or three people go down the ladder in sections until they reach the ground. All escaped unharmed although the family has had to spend the night outside. This Tuesday morning they have been able to enter the house, which has been badly damaged. Agents of the Municipal Police have carried out an ocular inspection to determine why the flames originated.