Ras Al Khaimah: A man rescued a baby girl from a house fire on Sunday night after he saw smoke billowing out of the building.
The seven-month-old girl was alone in the house. Her father had gone to perform Maghrib prayers at a nearby mosque while the rest of the family were out doing some work. The Arab family house was partially destroyed.
Khalifa Al Shehi, an Emirati government employee who works at the Civil Defence Academy in Abu Dhabi, had just performed Maghrib prayers and was in his car when he spotted smoke coming from the two-storey house.
He said he pulled over and went to see if he could get into the house as the main door was closed.
“I saw smoke coming from the house … I was struggling to find a way inside,” he said.
He said he managed to get in through a window and called out to see if anyone was there but there was no reply.
It was then that he heard the sound of a baby crying coming from upstairs and quickly ran up to carry her out of the burning building. The rescue operation took ten minutes.
Shocked
“By this time the civil defence team as well as the baby’s father had arrived,” he said.
He asked the baby’s father if anyone else was in the house but the shocked man said there was not and that he had rung the civil defence as soon as he saw smoke coming from his house.
Lieutenant Colonel Obaid Juma Al Keebali, head of Civil Defence operations at Ras Al Khaimah, said that the operations room received a call at 6.42pm from Al Shehi saying heavy black smoke was engulfing a house in Al Jolan.
The baby girl, who has been identified as M.H., has been taken to hospital for a check-up.
Initial investigations showed that the fire started in the kitchen.
