Mother saves children from burning building in China – but help arrives too late for her
Bystanders use sheets to catch girl and boy
A mother of two threw her children to safety from a burning building before dying from smoke inhalation in central China last week.
The woman, a two-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy where trapped in their fifth-floor flat in the residential building in Xuchang, Henan province, when the fire broke out on Friday morning, news site Thepaper.cn reported.
Footage of the incident on video news platform Pear Video showed dark smoke billowing from a flat window as the woman and the children shouted for help.
Bystanders below said firefighters were on their way but the woman threw some bedsheets to the crowd, asking them to help.
The bystanders unfolded the sheets to make a net, catching the children after the woman threw them out the window.
The children landed safely but the mother passed out from the fumes before she could make the jump, the report said.
Firefighters soon arrived and pulled the woman from the burning flat, rushing her and the children to Xuchang People’s Hospital.
But the woman could not be resuscitated and was declared dead that afternoon.
The two children sustained only minor injuries. An investigation into the cause of the fire was under way, the report said.
