Dubai: A pregnant women in her second trimester can find it physically taxing just to walk across the room.
Imagine then the plight of Candice Vincent, 31, who being five months pregnant had to descend from the 56th floor under severely stressful circumstances.
Vincent, a French woman, had come to Dubai on a visit and on December 31 was staying with her cousin at the latter’s apartment at the Address Hotel Downtown when the fire broke in the building a few hours before the midnight fireworks display was to begin.
It had been a long day of travel and Vincent was exhausted. “We (her cousin, uncle and she) planned on going to bed early,” she said. They were just finishing dinner when they heard something hit against the wall of the apartment.
Her cousin Mounia Khalifa and she went to check the corridors outside the apartment to see if they could find out what happened and saw people rushing out of their apartments [towards the stairwell]. “We were told it was New Year’s Eve and the lifts were busy, so we thought that’s why people were using the stairs. So we went back in to continue with our dinner,” said Vincent.
Ten minutes later, the fire alarm went off and a friend of her cousin called to tell her that they needed to get out of the apartment. “First, we thought it was a joke,” said Vincent, ”but we then decided to take the stairs.”
In the stairwell, it was very quiet on the higher floors, said Vincent. Her cousin was in a panic but Vincent did all she could to stay focused on reaching the ground floor.
As Vincent, her cousin and uncle descended the stairs still not knowing what was going on, they decided to shout out for help. “We screamed out so someone would hear us and tell us what was going on. Finally someone answered our call and told us to hurry down [as there was a fire]. We did not know how bad the fire was or what could be awaiting us at any floor on our way down.”
For Vincent, it was an ordeal to make her way down from the 56th floor by stairs. Among her fears was that they should not be the last ones on the staircase.
“I couldn’t take the stairs four by four,” said Vincent. “I didn’t want to lose my baby.”
Under the circumstances, she hurried herself as much as it was prudent.
Every step of the way, she wondered if there was an alternative route to escape. “The stairs were too narrow, and all I could see were items left behind by people fleeing, phones, bags, shoes. I could tell people were running for their lives.”
At one point, she said, she could see people on the lower levels queuing up to exit the building. “Some were pushing and arguing, others were helping the elderly who couldn’t breathe.”
It was only after she finally exited the building and saw the night sky above her that she realised she was out.
But that was not the end of her ordeal. Vincent had to manage her way out of the crowds on the ground who thronged the area watching the fire rage. “I was very careful not to fall,” she said. “My cousin was highly anxious and all around, kids could be heard crying. A restaurant closed its doors as people tried to go in, but they let me in for a glass of water because they could see I was pregnant.”
Her cousin, Khalifa, told Gulf News, “It was awful for my pregnant cousin, I was caught between saving my own life and looking to her safety but thank God she didn’t panic as much as I did. Thank God she was saved.”
Vincent spent the night at her cousin’s friend’s apartment and the next day she was given alternative accommodation at a hotel.
She managed to get her passport back after three days and left for Hong Kong on January 4.
“The first thing I did in Hong Kong was to check if my baby’s heart was beating fine. I was freaking out about that. Thankfully, all is fine,” she said, speaking from Hong Kong.
She is extremely glad she did not fall off to sleep early that night as she had planned to “I don’t know what would have happened if I had.”
