A MAJOR fire in a high rise block of flats in Dubai involved a recent former senior reporter at the Evening Times newspaper.
Sarah Swain was on the 14th floor of the towering inferno.
She left the Evening Times to join, at the beginning of last month, a magazines group as deputy editor.
Reports the local paper from where she used was brought up and where her mother still lives, she was among 600 people to be safely evacuated from the Tamweel Tower. It is understood there were no serious casualties.
Paticularly frightening, she says, was the burning cladding to the building crashing to the ground.
She was staying in the apartment of a friend from when she was a student.
She is quoted in the Grimbsy Telegraph, as saying: “We heard the alarm going off and we jumped out of bed and started making our way down the staircase. We thought it was a false alarm. After a few floors we could smell smoke and we just thought, ‘Oh my God!’, and started running.
“It was awful, there seemed to be no other people coming down until we got to the bottom and saw a family with a baby.
“When we were climbing down the staircase, going round and round, I couldn’t help but think of the World Trade Centre. Because the building is so tall, it seemed to take us ages to get out.
“By the time we had made our way out, one side of the tower roof was on fire. We couldn’t believe it, we were in shock, we both feel very lucky.”
Her friend’s three pet cats were found safe and well and the pair’s possessions were retrievable afterwards, albeit smoke damaged.
