RESIDENTS in an apartment block in old Nicosia were forced to scale the walls of the building in the early hours of yesterday to escape a fire, which broke out on the first floor.
The fire broke out around 4.30am in the building on Germanou Patron Street in the block of flat in which the residents are mainly Filipino women.
“I woke up from the shouting, people were shouting. The smoke hadn’t arrived yet at my apartment,” said Lauren, one of the residents of the second-floor apartment.
Initial investigations by the Electromechanical services, fire brigade and police did not reveal how the blaze had started but investigating officers said they did not believe it was due to an electrical fault.
The investigation is ongoing to determine whether the fire started by accident or an arson attack.
Residents of the first floor apartment, where the fire started, escaped by leaving their possessions behind, making their way onto the balcony and jumping down to the street level. Prior to making his own escape, a Palestinian resident on the first-floor helped the women from the second floor to climb down to the first-floor balcony where they could jump to the ground.
They were unable to make use of the stairs as the smoke was too thick to permit escape.
Prior to climbing down to the first-floor balcony, Myra from the Philippines handed her baby to neighbours in the building next to theirs, across the divide separating their balconies. “The baby was safe. I handed him across to the other building. It was a very dangerous thing to do, but at this moment…” said Myra.
With her baby safe she then made her own escape by climbing down to the first floor balcony and jumping to the street from there.
“Everybody on the first floor jumped from the balcony down to the street,” said Fotis Chalios, resident of the third floor apartment. “I was the last to come down. The fireman came up and got me wearing a mask with oxygen,” said Chalios.
Chalios, who is from Symi, lived alone on the third floor whilst the second floor apartment was home to six adults and a baby from the Philippines. The first floor apartment where the fire broke out housed ten people.
“It’s the 12 tribes of Israel there. Completely international, Romanians, Arabs, Filipinos,” said Chalios of the mixed nationalities who were all co-habiting in the three-bedroom first floor apartment.
After the blaze, the electricity in the block was no longer working and the first floor apartment was badly smoke-damaged and largely destroyed inside. The second and third floor apartments were, however, more or less untouched by the fire and had just sustained some smoke damage.
As regards where they would stay now and what options faced them, residents of the first-floor apartment were still in a mild state of shock and were unsure what steps to take next. “I don’t know, we came here to work, but now…” said Laiselle, one of the residents as she was sorting through clothes not damaged by the blaze due to their being located in a sturdy wardrobe at the time.
“I stay here because the house of my employer has only three rooms, so I stay out,” said Laiselle who works as a maid. Neither she, nor other residents of the apartment where the blaze broke out, knew why or how the fire had started.
