FIRE STUDENT: I'M LUCKY TO BE ALIVE - Max Kreijn, 22, escapes early hours blaze in Eccleston Square

Published: 25 February 2011
by TOM FOOT and TOM ANTEBI

A STUDENT has told how he was forced to climb down a drainpipe in his pyjamas as fire ripped through a five-storey block of flats.

Max Kreijn, 22, escaped from the building in Eccleston Square, Victoria, as it was engulfed by flames and smoke in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Forty firefighters from crews across the capital rescued 17 people using a long ladder as they fought to bring the blaze under control. The cause of the fire is under investigation but some residents have claimed there were no fire alarms in the building.

Mr Kreijn said: “I woke up because I thought there was a fight downstairs and I heard glass breaking. So I opened the door and at that moment black smoke came through and hit me in the face. Within a few seconds the whole apartment was filled with black smoke. 

“We all started running around and trying to find the exit, and we started to look at the back, but we realised that if the fire service came they couldn’t reach us. 

“We were panicking. With the five of us at one little window, breathing for air, from the back of us smoke was coming up and from underneath us.”

Firefighters eventually reached Mr Kreijn using ladders and helped him to the ground.

Mr Kreijn added: “By the time I started on the ladder, it broke. We had tried to find the exit route and there were no fire alarms in the building. We could have died if I hadn’t woken up.”

The second, third and fourth floors were severely damaged and Mr Kreijn said he lost his “theories on marketing”, research he had worked on for two years, and also private diaries from his travels around Amsterdam and Madrid were lost in the blaze. 

Bob Toal, a student who has lived on the third floor for five and a half years, said: “I think it was an electrical fault of some description. 

“I climbed down the drain-pipe and the rest came down by a ladder, and there were two people on the roof.”

The Fire Brigade were called out at 3.37am and the fire was under control just over two hours later. 

Crews from Westminster, Soho, Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Clapham and Lambeth fire stations attended the incident.


Station manager Clive Robinson said: “Our crews worked really hard to get this blaze under control as quickly as possible and prevent it from causing any more damage. We used our turntable ladder, an appliance used to gain access to fires occurring at height, to rescue people from the roof and a 13.5 metre-long ladder to rescue people from the third floor. It was a successful rescue operation.”