(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Â A six-member family, including five children, had a miraculous escape from their house on the second floor after a blaze gutted the apartment in Barwa real estate company's affordable housing unit in Mesaimeer yesterday.
The fire alarm in the house apparently didn't work, exposing loopholes in the safety system in the sprawling complex.
A six-member Arab family was trapped inside the house for several minutes and two children were injured, according to sources. When the fire broke out at around 11am, the mother and her six children were sleeping in two rooms. The fire alarm didn't work and the sound of an explosion from the main switchboard in the hall woke them up to the blaze, it was learnt.
The siblings - two girls and a boy - were sleeping in one room and the mother and other two children were in another bedroom. The father was in his office when the fire broke out.
There are many apartment blocks in the complex that has nearly 1,000 residential units. The walls of the houses are made of gypsum and other flammable material, supported by steel.
The fire reportedly started from the hall, caused by a short circuit in the air-conditioner. A seven-year-old girl was the first to be woken up by the blaze and she opened the bedroom door to the hall that was full of smoke and flames. Her brother, who was with another sister in the same room pulled her back. But by then she had suffered burns in her hands, back and other parts of the body. All the three jumped out of the window and the elder sister sustained injuries on her leg, said a source close to the family.
The mother and two children who were in the other room were rescued by neighbours using a steel ladder. A Civil Defence team arrived and launched fire-fighting operations. All family members were taken to the Emergency Department of the Hamad Medical Corporation. Furniture and other valuables in the house were destroyed, though no other houses in the block were affected by the fire.
A resident of the complex said fire alarms were recently disabled by the company that maintains the premises. They were also not connected to the Civil Defence control room, according to some reports.
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