Former Gulf News staffer Dennis Borja Mallari, the photographer trapped in a burning 63-storey hotel in Dubai rolled his video camera as he clung for dear life trying to avoid a smoke-filled room and blaze coming at him.
Finally, he found a cleaning platform outside the building to hang from.
"There was a thick, black foul-smelling smoke inside the building where I was. I was nearly choked," Mallari recalled.
Here’s a look inside and outside the skyscraper that caught fire on New Year’s Eve in Dubai, which shocked global viewers.
Most of the 3-minute 6-second video showed the building’s facade, the ground below and his feet as Mallari perilously dangled from the 48th storey of the 991-foot tall building, waiting for rescuers or his last breath - whichever comes first.
From the dizzying height where he was, the wind was blowing hard and the fire was raging below. From there, he made frantic calls to friends to ask for help and turned his torch on and trained it on the ground.
But help didn't come right away. And for a massive building that's already burning, it was not easy to locate him.
Mallari, a veteran lensman in Dubai, told Gulf News: “I tried to get out through the stairs initially, but I figured I’d die of suffocation. So I went back and tried to find a way out."
On Thursday night, Mallari said he had nothing else in mind than to get the best New Year fireworks shot of the Burj Khalifa for his newspaper, the Arabic daily Al Bayan.
Mallari, who photographed Philippine presidents while working in Manila, joined Gulf News before moving to the Arabic newspaper Al Bayan, for which he was taking New Year shots using these camera equipment.
Friend indeed
But it was a Gulf News lensman Ahmad Ramzan, a friend of Mallari’s, who went out of his way to make sure he gets to safer ground.
“When I learnt that Dennis was stuck on the 48th floor, I went crazy,” recalls Ramzan. “In the beginning, I thought there was nothing I could do. Both the hotel and the Dubai Mall were being evacuated,” said Ramzan, who was covering the New Year’s Eve events from the Dubai Mall.
By then, the security crew had started evacuating people from the mall.
“I went crazy when I realised my friend was dangling from a rope on the 48th floor of the burning hotel,” recalls Ramzan.
He then dropped his camera equipment with another photographer so he could run after the buggy ambulance guys passing by.
“At first I couldn't get through to them. So I just kept yelling -- not talking -- at them that my friend is dangling from a rope on the 48th floor.”
A staff from Emaar then took him to the police securing the area, who then took him to the Civil Defence team on the ground as the hotel was being evacuated. Rescue teams were immediately dispatched to the 48th floor twice. But Mallari couldn't be found.
By then the hotel had been completely evacuated. It was only on their third run that the rescuers finally found him.
“The firefighters were real professionals. The guy who was giving orders, prabably the incident commander, was even more professional, he kept on talking to Dennis on my phone while the search team was scouring the entire 48th floor. He kept Dennis busy so he won't panic. He didn't stop talking to him till his men found him."
Mallari posted on his Facebook page: "I thank God, the rope, the belt and the Dubai Civil Defence people."
By Jay B. Hilotin
