Chandigarh PG fire: ‘She helped me get out…I wouldn’t have been lying here had she not been there’

Thinking on her feet, Jasmine quickly took out a chair from her room and put it on their half-open balcony. She asked the others to push her to the rear and follow her lead. But it was only she who made out of the house unharmed. “She helped me get out. If it had not been for her, I would not have been lying here,” she adds. Pakshi, who was her friend and batchmate did not follow. Pakshi’s brother had recently moved to Canada and she had plans to move there after completing her BBA.

“They had built small extra rooms at the rear of the house which is supposed to be a clear area. Stern action must be taken against the owner, they should be held responsible,” Jasmine says.

But her sentiments do not echo with Famina, who lies right next to her. She refuses to sign a written statement given to her by a Sub-Inspector of the Chandigarh Police, blaming the owners. Famina argues, “How can you say we complained to them for the lack of fire emergency equipment when we did not? They have stood by us whenever we needed them. It is the administration which does nothing to keep a check on such incidents. All the PGs look alike, with narrow pass-ways and no windows.”

Famina realised about the fire when she left her room on the second floor to go to a nearby juice shop late in the noon. “As I went on to the first floor, I realised mattresses in a room in the middle of PG had caught fire. The warden was just standing there. I told her to get some mud as we could not throw water, there were a lot of pieces of electrical equipment. I had rushed to my floor to call the owners.” It was after she tried to come back to the first floor that she saw the fire had spread substantially. “I could not see anything. There was so much smoke. I could not even see the stairs,” she says.

Famina then ran back and found a helping hand in his neighbour, who asked her to jump the roof. “The boundary of the roof was very high. So there were bricks at the rear of the walls that I tried to keep my feet on and cross over. It was when the brick broke that I fell down. What happened afterwards I don’t remember,” she says as a team of doctors, nurses and police comes over.

Several PG mates sitting outside, who only got to know of the incident on their return from several places, stood shocked outside the emergency looking at videos of the incident being flashed on their phones. “We have friends that we will stay the night with. We have no idea where we will go afterwards and we are not even thinking about it right now,” says Gunmeet, another PG dweller, while waiting for news about her friends.

Back at the PG, the roads that were always empty have now been jammed by news anchors, police vans and several cars coming in and moving out. The narrow stairs, which can only be used by one person at a time have now been covered with a paste of ash and water. Half-burnt cardboards float on the floors of the rooms. The rooms are so small and packed with wardrobes that three people can barely stand inside at a time. Exits of room have been blocked with steel frames that have fallen after the fire. A policemen guards one room, asking people not to enter. Another closed room, with no outlet, is still filled with smoke and even after the fire has been extinguished, is almost burning hot. Neighbours, people from sectors far-off keep arriving at the scene while women of the neighbourhood discuss how girls leave their equipment unattended and cause such accidents.

Girls of several PGs around come to look at what has happened. Prerna, a 18-year-old who just shifted to a PG which overlooks this one, says, “I was sitting in my room when this happened. We first saw a lot of smoke and almost a few minutes later, we saw flames of fire. Fire brigade came a little late.” She trails off as her phone starts to ring. It is her mother calling, concerned if she were okay. As news flashes on various outlets, girls around the sector continue to receive calls from worried parents and kin.