“I SAW MANY DEATHS”
Laotian tourist Kan Kutirat, who was in the bar at the time, told AFP he “heard loud screaming from a lot of people inside – chaos happened”.
“I never experienced anything like this before,” he told AFP. “The images are still stuck in my mind.”
Motorbike taxi driver Surin Jaiharn said he saw the fire burst into the street from the bar door.
He helped about five people fleeing with burnt and blistering skin, while another driver carried a victim away from the danger.
“I feel depressed. I saw many deaths and I do not know the fate of the people I helped,” Surin, 45, told AFP.
A survivor said the fire spread so rapidly that there was no way to get out at all.
“The people who managed to get out were already outside and they ran to the outer zone. The people who were inside couldn’t get out, because we didn’t know where the fire exit was,” Usa Tadsree, 40, told Reuters.
“I went out with friends, there were about five of us. Two died and two survived, along with me, because we went out to smoke a cigarette. Right after we went out to smoke, within a second, we looked at the wall and saw there was smoke … Before we could even get anywhere, it was like something was pushed out, and there was a boom – a very fast boom. We didn’t have time to think, didn’t have time to do anything at all.”