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Sophie Miller with boyfriend Adam Thompson |
Blaze leap student: ‘I thought I would die’
Agonising dilemma as smoke cut off flat escape route
A STUDENT trapped in a burning building has told of her agonising decision to leap from a second-floor window rather than face the deadly flames.
Sophie Millar, 21, was forced to make the terrifying choice as a blaze engulfed the sauna below her flat in Royal College Street, Camden Town. Two died in the fire earlier this month.
Ms Millar said: “I thought I was going to die.”
It is the first time the final-year theatre design student, who lost most of her work in the flames, has spoken about the fire, which gutted the ground floor and basement of the unlicensed A Touch of Class sauna.
Ms Millar, who was at home with her boyfriend, brother and flatmate when the blaze took hold, said: “As soon as we went to bed we heard noises outside. My flatmate went to look out of the window and that’s when she saw loads of smoke billowing out and flames coming from downstairs. She jumped up and screamed that there was a fire.”
In a “panicky haze” Ms Millar tripped over a suitcase in the dark. She said: “It was unbelievable and really scary. I realised straight away how serious it was.”
Although her flatmate managed to flee via the staircase, the others were stopped by the smoke.
Ms Millar said: “My brother went halfway down the staircase and came back shouting we had to jump. It was really scary. It’s the sort of thing you’d never do unless you had to and the thing we had to land on was just a roof.
“We didn’t know how safe it was and thought we could fall through into the fire. I also thought I might break a leg but it’s just survival instinct – you have to get away.”
The group hung off a window ledge before dropping to the three-foot-wide awning below. She and her boyfriend, Adam Thompson, both broke bones in the leap, although he still stopped to help women trapped in the flat below who could not open their window.
Ms Millar said: “Straight away my foot was in a lot of pain but the adrenaline was pumping so fast and you don’t notice it. We ran along the ledge away from the fire, but I started to panic because my boyfriend had stopped and I didn’t know why he hadn’t come with me.”
They escaped by climbing through a neighbour’s window.
Ms Millar, who has suffered from nightmares since the tragedy, says she will never return to Camden Town, so scarred is she by the experience.
She said: “I’m really angry about it. The sauna was unlicensed for two years and was classified as an unsafe building. It’s quite shocking. Obviously, if we’d known it was unsafe perhaps we wouldn’t have moved in.”
Safety inspections at the sauna by police and council officials stopped after the Town Hall refused to renew the business’s licence in 2005.
Perihan Djelal, 34, and Daniel Eamonn O’Halloran, 44, who were trapped in the basement, died in the blaze. Fire officers initially believed it was started by an electrical fault, although it is understood they are investigating whether a candle could have been the cause.
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