ISLAMABAD: A four-year-old girl, Yusra, lost her life due to suffocation when a fire suddenly broke out in her two-storey house situated in Bhara Kahu, reducing the whole structure to ashes besides destroying all belongings and valuables of the resident family.
According to the details, the tragic incident happened when one of the family members swiped a matchstick to light a gas stove for preparing breakfast. It may be noted here that the seven-member family was living on rent in Mangu Town vicinity in Bhara Kahu.
While narrating his ordeal, Muhammad Fiaz, who is living in the house along with his wife and five daughters, said that it was in the morning on February 26 when the fire erupted, taking no time to engulf the whole house and burnt everything to ashes.
Fiaz, who is cab driver, broke down stating that he was helpless as his four-year-old daughter Yusra battled for life.
The ill-fated father told Pakistan Today that when the fire broke out, the locals rushed to the spot and started a rescue operation on self-help basis before the fire brigade vehicles reached.
He, however, stated that the intensity of the flames was so high that locals failed to control it from engulfing the entire house instantly.
“All household items including furniture, utensils and other necessary accessories of basic life are also gone,” one of his daughter’s said.
Fiaz told this scribe, while tears rolling down on his cheeks, that he lost all his hard and halal earned belongings in the inferno and was left with nothing.
However, he said that the desperate cries of his innocent child will echo in his ears forever, as he could not do anything to save her from the terrible blaze despite hectic efforts as he and another one of his daughters had suffered burn injuries while Yusra was dying.
Fiaz further said that the neighbours shifted the other injured persons to Poly Clinic Hospital for medical treatments; however, the damage was already done by the time the police, rescue team and a fire brigade reached in their usual late and unbothered fashion.
At present, the family has shifted to the house of the burnt house’s owner for temporary accommodation.
The owner’s brother Raja Yasir Hayat, who is on leave these days from his job in Doha (Qatar), said that he was the first to reach the burning house. “I had received first aid training in Doha and tried my best to avert the damage,” he said.
Yasir said that he crawled into the room where Yusra was stranded despite the intensity of the fire but she breathed her last just as he reached there.
They complained that the police and the rescue team service failed to reach the spot promptly, adding that initially the police came and filed a report but then they never returned. They also lamented that no representative of the local government or social welfare department had approached them for any assistance.
The bereaved father pleaded the government to help him in this trying time.
