A young father thought he and his family were going to die when fire engulfed their Dundee tenement home at the weekend.
Muhammad Owais Razzak (28) said the smoke that poured into their second-floor flat in Stirling Street was so thick that he feared he, his wife Umarah (26), son Aaban (eight months) and brother Mohammed Usman (22) would to choke to death.
“We couldn’t breathe,” he said. “We were coughing and spluttering and couldn’t get away from it to find fresh air. I thought we were going to die if the fire brigade had taken a few more minutes to reach us, I think we would have died.”
The civil servant was reliving the terror experienced by his family on Saturday morning. He was woken by the sound of the smoke alarm and assumed it had come from his brother making toast in the kitchen.
But the alarm kept sounding and was soon joined by those in other flats in the four-storey block. A fire had broken out in the flat below, understood to be occupied by a male tenant from eastern Europe.
Flames quickly took hold and the heat became so intense that the living-room window blew out.
In the street below a postman’s cries that the building was on fire were heard by a passer-by, who phoned 999.
Several units from Tayside Fire and Rescue raced to the scene about 8.30am.
Tenants on the ground and first floors were evacuated down the stairwell as officers with breathing apparatus guided them through dense, acrid smoke.
Those rescued included the tenant of the flat that had gone on fire. He was said to be confused and gasping for breath but also upset because his pet dog had not survived.
With the stairwell acting like a chimney, the flames and smoke billowed up, placing those in the third and fourth storeys at great risk.PanickingMuhammad Razzak had gone to see if his brother was safe but found he couldn’t get back to his own bedroom to join his wife and infant son.
“The smoke had come right into our flat and the inside corridor was black,” he said. “I knew my wife and son were panicking and in danger, and I couldn’t get to them.
“We were struggling to see and we couldn’t breathe. We were taking in lungfuls of smoke it made you feel sick.
“I had my mobile phone and I used it to phone the fire brigade. They put me through to the firemen who were outside and I explained how awful it was and tried to work out how we could be rescued.
“We couldn’t get out and down the stairs as that was where the heat and smoke were coming from. They told us to get to the windows and we got there to see firemen in a hoist ready to rescue us. When we looked out the window flames from the flat below were licking up the wall towards us we were rescued just in time.”
The family were taken to a waiting ambulance to receive oxygen and get checked over. They were taken to Ninewells Hospital as a precaution. Of greatest concern was young Aaban, whose lungs were filled with noxious smoke.
“At the hospital he was sick and the vomit that he brought up contained specks of ash,” his father said.
Without relatives in the area to take them in, they have now returned to the flat, where the pungent odour of smoke is still evident.
In a top-floor flat the family of Deborah Docherty (39) also feared for their safety, especially for her heavily pregnant daughter Lara (17).
Lara was also taken to Ninewells for a checkup but was declared well enough to be discharged.
Stirling Street was closed while firefighters tackled the blaze and dealt with its aftermath. The cause of the outbreak is under investigation.