A final cry of despair saved the life of Daria (29), her son and the girl next door last Tuesday. Due to a fierce fire on the ground floor of their apartment complex on Offenbachlaan in Eindhoven, the trio had nowhere to go. Meanwhile, their living room, where they were at the time, was black with smoke. “I thought this was the end”.
A week and a half later, the fear is still audible in Daria’s voice as she tells her story. Her son Jay (10) and upstairs neighbour Nadia (11) were about to go to school that morning, but closed the front door again in panic. There was a fire on the ground floor.
Daria decided not to flee, but to first warn the other residents of the complex. “Then it was too late for us to go down through the smoke. I didn’t know what I would find”. So she went back to her apartment with her son, the girl next door and her dog. There she closed the doors and windows.
“It turned black inside. The smoke came through under the door”, she emotionally says. There was no way out. “It was too high to jump and there was no other way to escape”.
She wet towels to cover her mouth and the children’s. Then there was nothing to do but wait for the fire brigade. “The children were in complete panic. My son almost fainted. We thought this was the end”.
When the fire brigade arrived, Daria opened the window and screamed for help with all her might. Moments later, they were rescued from their plight by firefighters. Miraculously, they remained physically virtually unharmed, but the psychological impact is enormous.
Huge anger
“It really bothers me a lot, but luckily I am getting help from all sides”, Daria says. She now lives temporarily at a holiday park in Brabant, because her home is uninhabitable due to the fire. A fire that turns out to have been started by her downstairs neighbour. “I really feel a lot of anger towards that man”.
He has now been arrested by the police, but the 29-year-old Eindhoven resident does not want to return to her apartment. “Me and my son can’t process our trauma there”.
Action for victims
After the fire, another problem arose for Daria and six other residents whose homes were damaged. Many of them do not have home contents insurance, so they have to pay all the costs themselves.
That is why a fundraising campaign has been started by a local resident to help the victims of the fire. “That’s really nice that someone wants to support us”.
You can donate to the victims of the fire by clicking on this link.
Source: Studio040
Translated by: Bob
