Eyewitness to Longford fire recounts early moments of inferno

Businessman Abdul Arjumand was in his Grafton Court office in the early hours of Sunday morning when he was alerted to an emergency in the building.

“I rent an office space here in Grafton Court,” Abdul told the Leader, pointing to the charred shell that the previous day housed up to 20 businesses.

The town centre location is a mini-commercial hub in the busiest part of Longford town.

Abdul operates an online travel and tourism concern, with the Grafton Court office a key part of his business: “I was here around one o'clock in the morning. I was just doing my work.

“At around quarter past one, I heard noises going on outside. I kind of ignored it initially. As I'm sitting down, I could smell something like burning rubber.”

He immediately reacted to the situation: “I opened the door because I just thought it was some firecrackers or something. I could hear that something was going on.

“I opened up the fire exit door, and went out on the balcony.

“Then that's when I saw the guards and they were literally banging on every door saying, “get out, get out, there's fire, there's fire”.

“I just ran downstairs, went outside and then ran to the front of Tesco. That's when I noticed the fire,” he outlined.

The speed of the spread of the blaze was alarming: “It wasn't so bad at that time, it didn't hit the roof. It took another 20 minutes before the fire brigade came.

“Then it just sped up. From the rear of the ground floor, up the vent. Then once it hit the roof, it just exploded. And it shot from one unit to the other.

“I was thinking the worst because the first two fire brigades came and struggled to control it. After about another 15 minutes, another two fire brigades came.

“They were struggling to control it. I think some more came eventually. That's when things started to calm down a little bit.”

Abdul said that because he was in the building at the time he managed to save his laptop, a vital piece of equipment for his work but others were not so lucky: “I managed to get my stuff and take it out. There's about seven, eight different offices in and around mine.

“A lot of the people had newly moved in, and had newly renovated everything. It's all destroyed now. I mean, so they've definitely been affected by all of this.”