Terrifying moment desperate parents throw their children out of tower block windows and jump to escape fire raging inside 16th storey residential building in Kazakhstan
- WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
- 31 people were taken to hospital after an inferno swept through a tower block
Terrifying footage shows residents of a burning apartment block in Kazakhstan throwing their children from windows to be caught by people below.
The fire devastated the 16 storey residential building in Almaty, the country’s largest city, after cables caught fire in a lift shaft between the fifth and sixth floors.
Some 300 people were evacuated from the burning building today, but some in higher floors were thrown out or jumped as the inferno enveloped the block.
Footage shows horrifying footage of young people falling from windows to be caught on mattresses and in sheets by those on the ground.
A young resident was also seen climbing from a top floor window onto a platform hoisted some 170ft above the ground from a crane.
A young person is seen falling from a height as an inferno sweeps through the tower block
Another person falls from a height as people on the ground stand waiting with a mattress
Footage shows a woman jumping out of window to escape fire in a high-rise in Almaty
It is unclear how many were thrown out or jumped of the building.
Reports said that emergency stairs could not be used as residents had blocked them.
As many as 31 people were taken to hospitals in the city, including 16 children.
Initial reports said there were no fatalities.
Fire services later brought tall rescue ladders to reach the upper floors of the building, lowering 40 people safely to the ground.
Residents were filmed exiting windows and dangerously climbing down ladders, before mounting separate extended ladders – to reach the ground.
Video still showed smoke pouring from the building as residents tried to make their escape.
The blaze was finally extinguished with 50 firefighters and three ladders.
Emergency services released a statement after the incident: ‘On August 1, at 17:10, the forces of the Department of Emergency were sent to the Alatau district.
‘Upon arrival, six minutes later, an apartment on the fifth floor of a 16-storey residential building was found to be burning with an open flame.’
They said it took around an hour and a half to extinguish the fire.
It took fire services around an hour and a half to extinguish the fire earlier today
A man exits a window and starts to climb down a ladder as flames envelop the building
In May 2022, video caught the moment a 37-year-old hero rescued a three-year-old girl hanging from a window of a Kazakh tower block.
Sabit Shontakbaev, 37, was on his way to work with a friend when he saw a crowd below staring up at the three-year-old.
Her mother had gone shopping and left her home alone in Kazakhstan’s capital Nur-Sultan when she piled up her toys and cushions to climb out of the window.
Sabit, a father-of-four, immediately rushed upstairs in a bid save her before she fell to her death.
He ran inside the block and went up to the seventh floor, to the flat immediately below where the girl was precariously hanging on.
‘We knocked and fortunately they immediately opened the door,’ he said.
He climbed out of the window below the terrified girl who by then had been holding on for 15 minutes.