DUBAI: Muslims living in — and near — the London tower gutted by a massive blaze early this morning were among the hero residents who saved lives, because they were awake eating suhoor.
Many residents banged on doors of sleeping neighbors and guided them to safety as the fire started to take hold of Grenfell tower, filling corridors with thick smoke, eyewitness said.
Muslims were among some of the first to notice the smoke and were able to alert neighbors, according to reports from the scene.
“Most Muslims now observing Ramadan will normally not go to bed until about 2 a.m. maybe 2:30 a.m.,” Rashida explained. “Until they have their late night last meal. They do their last prayer.
“So most of the families around here would have been awake and I think even with the noise with the helicopters, it would have brought a lot of attention to a lot of residents non-Muslim as well that would have thought something’s going on that’s not quite normal.”
She explained that the West London community, where the vast residential tower is, was “tightly-knit,” like many areas of the British capital, and had a particularly large Moroccan population.
“It’s a very diverse area, we have all nationalities, all religions… We all live peacefully among each other, there is not much crime higher than anywhere else,” she explained.
Rashida said people were generally able to walk around safely late at night, because “we all know each other.”
Speaking to the website, BuzzFeed, Nadia Yousuf, 29, said Muslim residents were some of the first people to spot the blaze, because they had woken for suhoor.
“They saw it just after they woke up to eat,” she said.