In a turn of events that could be described as miraculous, yesterday a young boy and an elderly man were saved from almost certain death.

When 24-year-old electrician Muzwandile Melusi heard shouting and saw smoke coming out of the window of a fourth story flat on Arbee drive, Tongaat, at around midday, he immediately dropped what he was doing and sprinted the 150 odd meters from his work at Alpha Electrical towards the commotion.

Lucky Nkenke and Sipho Ndlovu, who were working across the road from the flat at Bicks Hardware, grabbed a ladder and ran across the road.

“We saw the smoke and saw a small boy at the top looking out of the window, so we brought the ladder and started climbing,” said Nkenke.

They used the ladder to climb onto a brick awning that juts out of the building on the second floor, before pulling the ladder up and resting it on the awning to climb further.

“When we were coming up another man came out of a window and got on the ladder,” said Ndlovu.

That man was Melusi, who had run up the stairs and through the flat directly underneath the one engulfed in flames.

In an incredible feat of courage, Melusi then leaped from the ladder to a satellite dish above, where, dangling, he hoisted the child out of the window and passed him one-armed to Nkenke and Ndlovu.

“It was touch and go,” said neighbour and witness Joy Ramkaran.

“The man was standing right at the top of the ladder to catch the child, they could have so easily fallen back onto the road,” she said.

When asked how he had made it back down after rescuing the child, Melusi shrugged and said, “I just did the same thing, I jumped.”

Meanwhile, other men had broken down the front door to get the child’s grandfather, the only other person in the house, out of the building.

Emergency services arrived and put out the fire, while the child and grandfather were treated on scene by netcare 911 paramedics and taken to hospital for smoke inhalation.

Netcare 911’s Santi Steinmonn confirmed that civillians had rescued the pair from the flat and said the eThekwini fire brigade had gotten the fire under control.
Mother of the child, Solomi Reddy, was relieved that everybody was okay but did not wish to comment further.

According to eThekwini Fire Brigade division commander Bruce de Gier, the cause of the fire remains unclear.