An asylum seeker from India has told of his terror when he was trapped in a subdivided flat during a blaze in Tsim Sha Tsui yesterday. Another tenant told how he removed a window grille and scrambled down scaffolding.
Sakfaraz Alam Mohammed, 24, was about to leave his rented room when the fire started in another part of the seventh-floor flat in Chungking Mansions, Nathan Road, soon after 1.30pm. He retraced his steps and closed his room door as smoke filled the 1,500 square foot flat and hallway.
'The hallway was full of smoke and nobody helped me,' Mohammed said. 'It was very hot. If I had set foot on the hallway for one minute, I would have died.'
He dialled 999, then kept shouting for help as smoke poured into his room through gaps around the door. 'I kept coughing. Black dust was coming into my throat ... I waited for 15 to 20 minutes and two 'black angels' [firefighters] came in and saved me.' He was among 17 people who complained of feeling unwell.
A spokesman for the Home Affairs Department said it had received a complaint last month that Mohammed's flat is part of an unlicensed guesthouse but had found no evidence to substantiate this. It would now follow up on the case.
The Fire Services Department said initial investigation showed that a sheet had caught fire and lit a mattress in a six-square-foot room.
