A survivor has recounted his experience of jumping out of a Kyoto Animation Co studio after a man set fire to the building last week, leaving 34 people dead.
The 52-year-old employee was drawing landscapes on the second floor of the three-story building on the morning of July 18. There were about 20 to 30 people on that floor, he said.
At around 10:30 a.m., the employee heard a woman screaming, followed by a colleague rushing up from the first floor yelling "Fire!" and the studio alarm blaring. Thick black smoke spewed out from the spiral staircase about a dozen seconds later.
"I need to escape," he told himself. He crouched down and felt his way in the dark to the balcony a few meters away. There were already around a dozen other employees there, leaning over the railing and screaming for help.
Looking down, the man saw a person engulfed in flames and another lying on the ground 5 meters below the balcony who had jumped.
He thought he would "either die in the smoke or jump and get seriously injured." As the man struggled to decide, he heard others encouraging him, with one person shouting, "It's alright. You can jump. You can do it!"
He jumped off the balcony and only sustained minor injuries.
