DUBAI // Four teenage girls were in intensive care in a Dubai hospital last night after an explosion ripped through a family villa in Mirdif. The girls, all believed to be aged between 14 and 16, suffered first and second-degree burns in the blast on Friday night. Police are investigating.
Neighbours said they found the girls outside the villa after the explosion, one of them still on fire. They are in a stable but critical condition and under sedation at Rashid Hospital, family members said yesterday. "They are going to be critical for the next seven or eight days," said Anneline Oberholzer, whose daughter Kim, 14, a student at The Sheffield Private School, is being treated for severe burns to her face and body.
Mrs Oberholzer, her husband and friends of the girls visited the scene yesterday, as the family of another victim who lived at the property, Fatima, 16, was trying to salvage belongings. The force of the blast was evident from the basement, which was filled with debris and overturned furniture, to the second floor, where a door had been blown off its frame. Patio doors in the front room, opening to the communal swimming pool, had also been blown into the pool, and the bloodied footprints and handprints of the girls' escape were still evident on the staircase.
"I think the girls came together at Uptown Centre," Mrs Oberholzer said. "They must have gone back to the house, I didn't know until I got a call." Fatima's sister, Madiha Housee, 29, said she and the rest of her family had left home for a drive at 7.45pm, shortly after her sister had gone out, and they had not expected Fatima to return before midnight. But they arrived home, after receiving a call from a neighbour, to find her being put into an ambulance.
Two doors down, neighbours Ben and Zelda van Rooyen were sitting in their garden waiting for their dinner to cook at about 9.30pm when Mr van Rooyen said they heard "a huge bang, like a bomb blast", which his wife said had caused the clothes to fall from their bedroom cupboard. The couple raced outside to find the teenagers on the pavement outside screaming. One of the young women, Mr van Rooyen said, was still on fire.
"I ran inside to get a fire extinguisher, but another neighbour watered them down with a hosepipe," he said. "I went to check for a fire but I couldn't see anything." Mr van Rooyen, who has lived on the street for five years, then used large water cooler bottles to soothe the girls' skin while neighbours called the emergency services and his wife tried to get their parents' numbers. "One of the girls was in too much shock to give the correct number," Mrs Van Rooyen said. "We gave them bags of ice to hold and cold water to drink. That was all we could do for them until the ambulance arrived. If you can imagine the force that must have gone through their bodies, that ripped a railing out of the wall, I am surprised that they didn't have broken bones, if they didn't."
All four girls were then taken to Rashid Hospital, where just weeks ago a state-of-the-art burns unit was launched. Yesterday four friends of the girls, Rashid Shamsi, Hamad Bin Shamma, Mey Elizebeth, and Mattar Al Bloshi, visited Fatima's home to offer their support. "We went straight to the hospital after we heard," Ms Elizebeth, 19, said. "We will be going back to see them today. If their parents need anything we will, of course, [help]."
Police at the scene yesterday did not speculate on the cause of the accident, but said more details could follow today. While the families and neighbours wait for the results of the investigation, Mr and Mrs Van Rooyen said they would not be lighting the stove, or even a cigarette in their garden, until a gas leak has been ruled out. "It was an awful [situation] in our quiet street where nothing has ever happened," Mrs Van Rooyen said.
Meanwhile, Ms Housee and her family are hoping to vacate the three-storey villa that, she said, is now filled with haunting memories. "We don't want to be here any more. We don't want to see this place. We are mentally tortured." While the landlord has offered them another villa behind theirs, to escape the damage, she is anxious about its proximity to their former home and its effect on her sister when she is eventually discharged.
"I don't want my sister seeing or thinking about this place," she said. "I want her to forget about it, and being near could cause future damage. I want to get her better." @Email:loatway@thenational.ae
