“Obaida Al-Hassani”: A young man risks his life to save displaced people in a shelter center in Al-Hasakah

Edited by: Baraa Mohammad

September 11, 2024, was not an ordinary day in the life of the young man, “Obaida Al-Hassani,” when he was in front of “Marwan Youssef” school in the city of Al-Hasakah, which houses displaced people from the city of Sere Kaniye/Ras Al-Ain.

He carried out great humanitarian work that contributed to saving lives caught in the flames.

Al-Hassani said during an interview with ASO News Network that he was near a school housing displaced people from the city of Sere Kaniye, in the city of Al-Hasakah, when fire broke out inside the school, specifically in a house belonging to his uncle on the street opposite the school.

The school caught fire as a result of the explosion of a “Babur” gas stove used by the parents, in light of the permanent lack of gas cylinders.

He added, saying: Seeing the flames in the school made him intervene to help the families, as the situation could not tolerate delay, and his thoughts were limited to rescuing the stranded families.

Al-Hassani, who works on a tanker to transport drinking water, mentions that the school was closed from the outside, and this might put the people inside in danger, according to him.

He quickly started the tanker and drove it towards the school door. Indeed, the door opened due to the hit of the tanker, the front of which was broken and shattered.

Saving lives
At that moment, Obaida Al-Hassani did not think about the tank or the danger of venturing into the school. Rather, all he was thinking about was how he could save the people.

Obaida says that the tanker was full of water, and this helped him extinguish the fire.

The shelter center inside the school includes approximately 46 families, most of whom are displaced from the city of Sere Kaniye.

Obaida says: “I was sitting on the fourth floor of my uncle’s house on a street opposite the school,” when I saw the flames rising from the school, surrounding the people, most of whom were women and children.

Some young men tried to open the outside door of the school, but they were unable to do so, so I rammed the tanker into the school door and was actually able to pass through the door with the tanker, says the tanker driver.

Obaida crossed into the school, and some young men helped extinguish the fire, especially since the tanker was full of water. “Fortunately, the tanker was full of water, and that allowed me and the youth to pump water toward the fire. We took turns carrying the water hose and spraying toward the fire, opening a way to get people who stuck inside out.”

The fire resulted in injuries and cases of suffocation among the people, as the fire resulted in 11 people suffering from suffocation and varying burns, including 5 children and 4 women, while a young man and a woman were critically injured as a result of their exposure to severe burns to the body.

Eyewitnesses told ASO News Network that when the fire began to expand, the people climbed to the roof of the school, and this helped greatly because there were no casualties despite the large size of the fire.

Obaida and the neighborhood youth were able to extinguish the fire and save the lives of civilians, until the arrival of rescue teams that contributed to controlling the fire.

However, Obaida’s adventure led to the front of the tanker being shattered and broken during the collision with the school door, which resulted in serious damage to the tanker, which could not be repaired, in addition to his loss of identification documents that he had with him, such as his ID card, driver’s licence, and tanker papers.

The fire was the result of the incorrect use of a gas stove, which became a danger to the people, in light of its widespread use, which would almost claim the lives of many people, if it not been for the courage of Obaida and the youth of the neighborhood.

Although Obaida considers what he did to be a duty, and that humanity led him to help the people, he was also exposed to material damage and the loss of personal documents, which he requires support to recover and work on, as he described.

He says, “When I helped the people, I did not think about the losses. My main concern was people’s lives and saving them.”

The shelter center that was exposed to the fire is a school, where displaced families from Sere Kaniye/Ras al-Ain live, in need of greater attention and provision of services, and work on constant monitoring to prevent any other incident from occurring.

One of the neighborhood residents says, perhaps, had it not been for the courage of Obaida and the neighborhood residents, and the risk of tearing down the school door, the fate of the residents inside the center would have been unknown.