Ras Al Khaimah: Three Emirati children and their housemaid were rescued by five Emiratis who braved flames engulfing a house in Ras Al Khaimah on Monday night.
The three children, two girls and a boy, were at home with their Bangladeshi housemaid while their mother was out.
They were rescued by the Emiratis after the fire broke out in their house in the Al Khat area of Ras Al Khaimah.
Jamal Saif Ali, 32, one of the rescuers, told Gulf News that he saw the fire while he was coming from the mosque towards his house, located in the same area.
He said: “I saw the housemaid in the road, shouting that there were children inside.”
Ali saw another man, Mohammad Obaid, 42, a close neighbour to the burning house, standing on the fence struggling to find a way inside as the front door was closed tight.
“The house was engulfed in smoke and fire. It was a terrible sight, for a moment I paused because I didn’t know where to start. Flames were leaping out of the house from every window and every door,” Ali recalled.
Both Ali and Obaid broke the front door and tried to get inside to the children trapped in their bedrooms.
Ali said: “The children were stuck inside the blazing house.
“I went to the backyard of the house and switched off the power box. We then broke the front door but the blaze prevented us from getting in.
“I went to the back of the house hoping to find a way to enter the children’s room, I found a door and I broke it down with the help of other rescuers but the blaze still held us back.
“We broke the widows to get the smoke out”, Ali said.
Ali added: “We could not see anything because of the darkness, it was hard to find the children because we could not hear them as they had stopped crying.”
“I found first the eldest daughter, aged eight, and took her out, then people at the scene told me there was another six year old girl, I managed to find her and finally I found the little boy, aged four.
“I brought them outside and then the kids were taken by car to hospital,” Ali said.
The rescue operation took 15 minutes.
Their mother arrived after the children were transferred to hospital where their maid was also treated for smoke inhalation.
According to the mother the reason for the fire was an electrical circuit in the house’s bell.
A probe is under way to find the cause of the fire.
An official at Saqr hospital told Gulf News the children’s condition is improving.
The Ras Al Khaimah Civil Defence will reward the five young Emiratis who helped in the rescue in the coming days, an official said.
