Bayan Sied, 38, and his wife Nadia Yousuf, 29, are still waiting for news of missing family members who live on the floors above.
Sied told BuzzFeed News: “We live on the 15th floor, we came home about half past 12 and were watching TV for a while.
“By one o’clock my wife started smelling something, she saw lighting coming from the window, and saw a fire coming from the bottom floor.
“We ran outside. When we came out only the fourth floor was burning, one hour later the whole thing was on fire. As you can see it’s toast.
“We’ve got family inside, we still don’t know, there are a lot of people missing. They live on the 23rd floor, the 19th floor, there are children missing. We haven’t seen many survivors.
“There’s a lot of people we know, we haven’t seen them, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We still have family and friends missing. We’re hearing stories some people are being treated at St Mary’s Hospital for burns, but that’s it. We’re just standing here waiting.”
His wife said she did not know who first raised the alarm, but said Muslim residents were among the first to notice the fire, as they woke up to prepare to break their fast.
“They saw it just after they woke up to eat”, she said.
She added that the housing association had been warned by residents that the building was a fire risk.
“There was a lot of warning about the pipes recently”, she said, “and it wasn’t safe. But nobody listened.”
–Hannah Al-Othman
