One of the survivors of the fire that gutted a building in the Johannesburg inner city has recounted how he was able to take his wife and child to safety, but he ended up falling from the first floor during the mayhem.
Sam Daud, 31, was sleeping with his family in one of the rooms on the second floor of the building on the corner of Albert and Delvers streets when he heard people shouting at about 1am.
“When I woke up I saw that the smoke was all over the building. The first thing I did was help my wife and child, who is one year and few months old, to safety. Once I left them outside the building, I went inside to see if there are items like phones that I could get. But I could not get anything because it was dark and the smoke.
“While I was inside, the smoke in the building became worse and it was clear that I could not go out the way my wife had left.
“I then went out the window on the second floor into the window on the floor below. But as I was trying to prepare to jump to the ground, broken glass from the window cut my hand and I fell from the first floor to the ground. I hurt my leg.”
Daud’s right ankle was swollen as he waited for paramedics to help him outside the building.
He has been living in the building for three years. He said they have been paying about R1,000 in monthly rent to a person who “owned” the room they had been staying in.
As Daud was taken away by an ambulance, hundreds of people gathered next to the building — some of them family members of people who lived in the building.
“My daughter has not been picking up her phone. I don’t know what to do. I have been calling and calling. Police do not want to allow us inside. It is just chaos,” one person said.
By Thursday afternoon, the death toll was more than 70, while more than 60 were injured.
There were 12 children among the dead.
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