84-year-old saved by his daughter

A loud bang and shaking of ground woke her up around 1:30am on Friday at her fourth-floor apartment in the six-storey building in Banani.

“I thought it was an earthquake. My first concern was to get my 84-year-old father out of the house,” said Nayer Rahman, a resident of the building.

Nayer along with her father Akramuzzaman, a retired professor of Bangladesh Agricultural University in Mymensingh, lived in the apartment.

“When I went out, there were pockets of fire across the apartment. The blast had shattered the doors,” she told The Daily Star about the ordeal of the night.

Nayer, 60, went straight to her father who has been suffering from old age ailments and also back pain for the last one month. The two followed some other residents of the building towards the stairs to the roof.

“The staircase was dark. The heat and smoke from the fire was unbearable and my father almost choked with the smoke,” she said.

She took a scarf from another woman and wrapped it loosely around her father's mouth and nose so that he could keep breathing.

After reaching the roof, she found many other residents already there. “We felt so thirsty. Many were shouting 'water, water'.”

People were trapped in the roof for over an hour, said Nayer.

Neighbours from adjacent buildings focused some light on the victims and hurled small bottles of water at the roof.

“We survived by drinking the water and spraying some on the roof which was heated up,” she said.

Locals informed the police and fire brigade about the fire.

Around 3:00am, Nayer with the help of firefighters took her father downstairs. A relative took the retired teacher to their Dhanmondi house while Nayer went to her uncle's in Gulshan.

Nayer's cousin, who lived in the apartment next to her, was injured in the accident. Yesterday, she attended the injured at City Hospital in Mohammadpur.

The 60-year-old has no idea whether they would be able to return to the building which was damaged in a suspected gas explosion.