As dense smoke choked the staircase and flames edged closer, standing on the second floor of a burning building with no escape route left, Mohd Aasif faced an impossible choice—stay inside and die of suffocation or jump from the building in hopes that someone would save him.
Recalling the terrifying moments that unfolded inside the three-storey commercial building on Usha Mehta Marg in Lucknow’s Aliganj, where a devastating fire claimed 15 lives on Monday, Aasif told PTI that he and his colleagues had just begun eating lunch around 2 pm when a word spread that something has gone wrong and everyone needed to leave immediately.
“We were not told that there was a fire. We thought it could be a minor short circuit as something similar had happened earlier,” said the 32-year-old, who worked at the animation centre located on the building’s second floor.
He said when they tried to exit through the biometric lock, the power failure caused the system to malfunction and they spent several seconds trying to open it.
By the time the door finally opened, thick smoke had begun filling the floor. The staircase—their only escape route—had already become a tunnel of smoke and flames.
“When we moved towards the staircase, we saw thick smoke coming from there. We then moved towards the front side, but smoke was coming from there too,” he said.
Within minutes, visibility had dropped so drastically that colleagues standing just a few feet apart could no longer see one another.
Desperate for air, Aasif grabbed a desk and smashed a glass window. Wrapping a wet towel around his face, he tried to breathe through the smoke.
“I picked up a desk and tried to break the glass window. I covered my face with a wet towel to breathe. When I broke the glass, I saw flames outside and people below were asking us to jump,” he told PTI.
The 32-year-old said at that moment he realised there was no way out and decided to jump from the front side of the building.
“I felt jumping was the only option because staying inside meant certain death,” Aasif recalled.
“I saw an electric wire in front of the building. I did not know whether it had power or not,” he said, adding that the wire was melting due to the heat and he suffered injuries while falling.
“After me, four-five others also jumped. By then, the fire and smoke had spread to the second floor and those inside could not escape,” he said.
Talking to PTI, Aasif recalled that the staircase connecting the floors acted like a chimney, allowing smoke and flames to rise rapidly.
“The route to the roof was blocked with a channel and a locked door. If that exit had been open, many lives could have been saved,” he said.
Aasif, who lives in Lucknow’s Ashiyana area, also claimed that the animation centre had more than 20 people present at the time of the incident and alleged that the building lacked adequate safety arrangements.
“There was no working fire alarm. Some safety equipment was present, but initially we could not locate the source of the fire because only smoke was visible,” he said.
He suspected the fire may have started from the pet shop and clinic on the ground floor, claiming that several air-conditioners and inflammable material stored there could have contributed to the blaze.
There was no independent confirmation of his claims.
Aasif said his colleague Jayant Gupta also jumped from the building and suffered severe injuries.
“He fell on an iron railing and was badly hurt. He remained on the road in pain until some people took him to hospital in an auto,” he said.
“I am okay now. I suffered severe injuries but I am recuperating now,” Asif, who was at his Ashiyana home, told PTI, recalling the deadly episode which took away the lives of several colleagues and budding animators.
The fire that ripped through the three-storey building on Usha Mehta Marg on Monday afternoon killed 15 people and injured several others. The incident has led to a high-level probe by authorities.
