Another witness, Huong, said a small boy was thrown from a high floor to help him escape the flames.
“I was about to sleep when I smelled something. I went outside and saw the fire,” she said.
“The smoke was everywhere. There was a little boy thrown from a high floor, I don’t know whether he survived or not although people used a mattress to catch him,” she said.
“WE WERE SO SCARED”
Neighbours reported several others jumping from the block.
“There was a middle-aged woman jumping down onto my terrace here. She hit her arm and broke it. Another person also jumped down here and broke their legs,” said Dao To Nga.
“A child was put into a plastic basket and lowered down”.
Some were able to flee the building using her roof. “This rooftop of my family helped 14-15 people escape,” she said.
One survivor, Nguyen Thi Minh Hong, told AFP that her family waited in their seventh-floor apartment at the back of the building for five hours before help arrived.
“We were sleeping when suddenly we felt very hot because the power had been cut. My husband opened the door and we heard people shouting for help and we saw smoke,” the 34-year-old said.
The family, which included her two children aged six and nine, tried to escape to the roof but were forced back into their apartment due to the heat of the fire.
“I was so scared. We stayed inside the room for five hours … I just tried to calm my kids down by holding a wet towel to their face,” she said from Hanoi’s Bach Mai Hospital.
“We were between life and death.”
Later, hundreds of people gathered outside a Hanoi morgue, waiting to hear if their family members and friends were among the victims.
One group of five women, sitting on the floor outside the morgue, said their “whole family had gone”.
“They were our children and grandchildren,” they said.
Source: CNA
