Heroes are found in the places we least expect. At times when situations get completely out of control, these heroes come from anywhere - even the neighbourhood to save the day.
Something like this happened in a shoe factory in Delhi's Sultanpuri when the workers got trapped in fire. Jyoti Verma, a woman living in the neighbourhood saved the lives of 20 workers, who were trapped inside a burning four-story footwear factory.
Image: PTI
Around 7 am, Verma said she was making breakfast when her neighbour Kunti Devi told her about a fire in the factory adjacent to her building. Hearing this, she rushed to the terrace and saw, at least 10 workers screaming for help in an open window on the third floor of the building of the factory.
58-year-old Verma used the presence of her mind and made a small bamboo ladder as an overbridge between the factory and the terrace of the building. Her timely action helped evacuate at least 20 workers. However, Four, including two minor boys, were killed in the fire.
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There was a gap of at least 15 feet between the two buildings and she did not want the workers to risk their lives by jumping across, initially she threw a saree for the workers to evacuate the place. But it did not work as the workers were scared to use it to climb down. She could then only find a was a small bamboo ladder. She then climbed on a makeshift bathroom (on the terrace) and put one end of the ladder on roof of the toilet and the other end on the window of the factory, reported Hindustan Times.
In the next half an hour, around 20 workers evacuated the factory using the ladder. Neighbours then alleged that the owners had been running the factory illegally for the last one decade. When the factory owner¡¯s son arrived after getting the news, he unlocked the gate.?