This is a Prothit Shams's detailed account of how he came face to face with a deadly inferno and lived to tell the tale.

At least 46 people were burned to death in a tragic fire incident at a seven-storied commercial building on the Bailey Road in Bangladesh's capital. the toll feared to rise more as many people were admitted to nearby hospitals with critical condition.

Let's read his tragic experience in his words:

I want to take a moment and thank Bangladesh Fire Service & Civil Defence for saving my life yesterday. I am not the person who writes these kind of things publicly on platforms like Facebook but what I faced yesterday night was beyond my comprehension. I was stuck on the 8th floor of the building that caught on fire in Bailey Road for 2 hours. 

There were about 20 of us stuck on the 8th floor, at first we were all trying to remain calm and figure out a way out but there was no fire escape and the staircase was burning in flames and our floor was filled with black smoke, we were barely able to breathe. We took refuge in the kitchen as it was the only place at that time with the least amount of smoke. I saw people jumping from the floor above us and what I saw next was just traumatising, people were caught in flames and I could do nothing to help them, at that moment I thought the fire would soon reach to us as well. 

The smoke levels gradually started increasing and I could feel everything inside me burning up and that’s when I honestly thought there would be no way out, this is it for me. My life was literally flashing before my eyes, everything I ever did, everyone I cared about, I was just thinking about them and trying to comprehend what should I do now. I could not remain calm anymore and thus took the decision to call my family to let them know about everything that was going on and told them where exactly I was situated in the building so that they could pass the information to the fire service. As this went on the people around me started panicking out of fear and everyone was calling their loved ones. One bhaiya and me took the initiative that somehow we have to get to the roof or the balcony as were we starting to suffocate in the pitch black smoke and we had been stuck in the kitchen for an hour and a half then.

Then we got to know that the fire service were rescuing people from the roof. One of us tried to go and see if there was any way to go upstairs to the roof but he came back coughing and saying the entire staircase was ablaze and that there was just scorching fire and it was getting more and more close to our floor as well. The balcony was the only option left for us and that bhaiya and me gathered everyone and we told them to grab water bottles and we took a decision that saved our lives, we somehow managed to reach to the balcony and that’s when I saw that the floor beneath was still caught in flames. We could finally see firefighters who were rescuing people using the cranes and we screamed our lungs out so that they could see us somehow in all the black smoke. Finally they were able to detect us and I never felt this much relief because I was honestly prepared to face death at that point. The two fireman that saved us were the most bravest people I ever met in my life, they were so composed and handled us with the utmost care when they were taking us on to the crane. I held that fireman and I just cried and thanked him for saving me. 

I am very grateful to be alive today, I am still in a state of shock and I was more traumatised when I was taken to Dhaka Medical Burn Unit, the state of the people there was something out of a horror movie, compared to them I got out unscathed. Every ten minutes someone was coming in stretchers all burned up, I never saw something this horrendous. I was thinking to myself how extremely lucky I was to come out of there without any serious injuries or to just come out of there alive. 

To everyone reading this I would like to say; be more appreciative that you are alive and well and that you are getting to see another day, it’s all fun and games until you are the one caught up in a situation like this. Anything can happen in an instant and you never know how it may all go wrong in a flash. 
Be grateful, be humble, keep your loved ones close and always be extra cautious and careful around your surroundings.