ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: A house in a two-storey building was burnt into ashes in Bhara Kahu, a suburb area of Islamabad, causing an irreparable loss to an already financially downtrodden family.
Muhammad Fiaz, along with his wife and five daughters, was living in a house as a tenant in Mangu Town vicinity in Bhara Kahu. The ill-fated family tumbled into grief after one of its members ignited a match stick to turn on a gas heater while having breakfast in the morning on February 26.
Subsequently, the gas heater burst into flames which engulfed the entire house in no time and burnt all household items including furniture, utensils and other necessary accessories.
The frightened family went into disarray and in their attempt to evacuate the burning house, Muhammad Fiaz and one of his daughters suffered burn injuries while his four-year-old daughter Yusra could not survive and died of suffocation and fire.
Immediately, the people from their neighborhood rushed in to rescue and transported the injured to the Poly Clinic Hospital for medical treatments.
Meanwhile, the police, a rescue team and a fire brigade also reached the scene and launched the rescue operation. The fire brigade succeeded in extinguishing the fire after a while; however, the damage had already been inflicted upon the family as it lost a daughter and all of their belongings in the fire.
Talking to the Dispatch News Desk (DND) news agency, Muhammad Fiaz told that he is a cab driver and had five daughters but in the incident, he lost one of them. He told that his another daughter also received minor burn injuries after receiving the first medical aid at the hospital, she has now been sent to her native village.
Muhammad Fiaz further apprised the DND that following the incident, they were left empty-handed, and now have temporarily been accommodated by their house owner named Raja Musarrat in his own house.
Raja Yasir Hayat, the brother of Raja Musarrat and an employee in Doha (Qatar) Police but is currently in Pakistan on leave, told that he was the first person who reached the burning house. He said that since he had received first aid training in Doha, he applied that and took the preventive measures to avert the further impending damage.
However, Raja Yasir Hayat added that flames were so intense that he had to crawl to enter a room wherein Yusra, Muhammad’s late daughter, had been stranded but as he managed to reach her, she had already succumbed to the fire.
When asked about the response of the police and the rescue service, they were complacent over their prompt response; though they said that initially the police arrived and filed a report but then they never returned. They also lamented that none of the local government representatives or social welfare outfits approached them for any kind of help.
Meanwhile, the local dwellers appealed to the government to provide financial assistance to the bereaved family to somewhat mitigate their sufferings.
