'Unsung heroes' recount spine-chilling experience at rescue operations

It is for no small reason that Mumbai's firefighters are being described as the "unsung heroes", who worked round-the-clock during the bloody terrorist attacks last week.

Over 350 hostages, including hotel guests and staff members, were saved in the first few hours of the murderous invasion.

Not for a moment did these men pause to think of their own safety, since safety of the hostages was their first and foremost concern, they say.

Their next task was to prevent damage to the 105-year-old heritage building. With no bullet-proof vests or safety gear to shield them, the firemen went headlong into a 60-hour operation of not just dousing the flames, but getting into the thick of a fierce battle between the terrorists and the NSG commandos.

At one point, on November 29, the third day of the siege at the Taj, one Major Vishal approached senior fire officers, seeking their help in monitoring the movements of the terrorists on the first and second floors of the hotel.

"We were huddled with the commandos in the cage of the hydraulically-operated ladder near the second floor windows of the Taj hotel on the Gateway of India side. We hid ourselves from the terrorists as well as the media, who would have given away our position," H. V. Girkar, station officer, Byculla Fire Brigade headquarters, told Gulf News.

"There was every possibility of the terrorists firing or throwing a hand grenade at us," he says. But after a well-deserved wait, NSG sharp-shooter Pathan (full name not known) saw the slight movement of a hand inside one of the rooms and fired. "Pathan then told me he was 101 per cent sure that the bullet had hit the terrorist's shoulder," said Girkar with a smile and displaying a spent cartridge that he had kept as a souvenir.

Immediate response

Teams of firemen, headed and supervised by chief fire officer Anil Sawant and joint chief fire officer, P. D. Kargupikkar, responded immediately when the emergency call came to their control room at 1am on November 27. The entire operation was a tough one, given the fact that an attack on a hotel is a nightmare not just for any counter-terrorist agency but for firefighters too.

"We waited on the terrace of the Salvation Army building, adjacent to the Taj on the BEST Marg road for two hours when we saw smoke and flames on the sixth floor. We also saw two men waving out to us from the hotel and wondered whether they were terrorists. But when we noticed they were wearing shorts, we rushed down."

Fire monitors comprising tankers and the Bronto skylifts were pressed into service, apart from the extension ladders that were mounted. By that time, people were trying to escape from the first floor by using curtains as ropes to slither down. "There were two foreigners who were planning to jump down, but we brought them to safety with the help of a skylift."

As the fire spread from the sixth floor to the rest of the hotel, firefighters started shouting outside every floor, asking people to come near the windows so they could be rescued.

Young assistant station officer V. C. Vishwasrao said: I still remember the shouts of the people: 'Save us, save us."

More than 100 firefighters were involved in the operations.