Sophie Rosser was coming home from a birthday party to the fifth-floor flat she shared with her boyfriend Oscar Silva when she saw flames and smoke coming from the block.
The 23-year-old architecture graduate, who was about to start a course in interior design, phoned her 28-year-old boyfriend from outside the flats and told him he needed get out quickly.
She then ran into the building in an attempt to warn others of the danger.
Mr Silva and the couple’s flatmate tried to make their way down the building’s fire escape, but found themselves beaten back by thick plumes of smoke and instead rushed out on to the balcony.
As Mr Silva looked down he saw a firefighter carrying Miss Rosser from the burning building in the Isle of Dogs, East London.
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| Sophie Rosser and Oscar Silva |
Mr Silva, an architect, and Miss Rosser had been living together for more than two years and that they had planned to marry and have children.
He told MailOnline on friday that she called him to alert him to the fire from outside the flats. ‘She told me to wake up my flatmate and get out of the flat.
"We were trying to make our way down the fire escape, which is supposed to be safe, but it was filled with smoke."
Mr Silva said they were only able to get down to the first floor before the heat and smoke became too intense to continue.
"I came back. I came straight upstairs and I tried to call Sophie to say we were safe, but she didn’t pick up.
"I never expected her to come upstairs."
Still stuck on the balcony, the next Mr Silva saw of his girlfriend was as he watched a firefighter carrying her from of the burning building over his shoulder.
"I could see the clothes she had on," he said. "I knew what she had been wearing that night so I knew it was her. I was expecting her to move a leg or something – but there was nothing."
Firefighters said the fire had broken out on the fourth floor. It was there that Miss Rosser collapsed after she rushed into the block of flats on her ill-fated rescue mission.
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