‘It was scary’: resident describes escape from east London high-rise blaze

Mariana Chaudhary was alerted by the smoke alarm as her neighbour's flat was gutted on Friday morning

Mariana Chaudhary, 34, lives at New Providence Wharf in east London. Her flat is on the eighth floor, where the fire broke out, and she was confronted by thick black smoke when she opened her front door on Friday morning. Her neighbour's flat was on fire, but the only thing that alerted her was her own smoke alarm.

I shut the door and ran back to my balcony because the flat was filling with smoke," she said. My eyes were stinging."