Apartment Fire in Paris

Friday April 15th, 2011 was going to be an ordinary day. I was at work when I received a phone call from The Us Embassy informing me that my precious 20 years old daughter, Jasmine, along with four of her friends from Science Po and Sorbonne Universities were victims of an apartment fire in Paris. She had died the night before jumping out of a fourth floor window to escape the fire. At that very moment I realized that my life can never be the same. Anything I have done and accomplished to that day was going to be insignificant compared to what I had to achieve now. (Which was to keep her name alive in order to be able to go through life for the sake of my family and my son.) Not only I had to learn to live with the grief and pain of loss of a child but I also had to make sure that her senseless death will not go unnoticed, that her beautiful existence will not disappear without leaving a mark. A few days later, I went to the Face book and solicited help from friends and families to come up with ways to prevent this tragedy from happening to others. Jasmine’s friends and our friends and families who were as grief-stricken as we were, responded overwhelmingly to my call and in no time The Jasmine Fire Safety Foundation was established to help educate students around the world the importance of Fire Safe Housing. The foundation aims to provide Fire detectors, fire safety ladders, and other necessary Fire Safety Equipments to low income families in addition to improving public awareness in hope of saving innocent lives.
We are going to Paris on May 14th for a week to say farewell to our beloved Jasmine. We are using this opportunity to get together with some of Jasmine’s friends and classmates at the fire site to discuss how to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. We will have some educational pamphlet and smoke detectors to distribute. If anyone is interested to help with the event or has ideas as how to be more effective in reaching our goal of saving lives thru prevention and education please contact us at my email ndjahanshahi@gmail.com . Our website www.FireSafetyFoundation.org will be up and running in a month and you can contact us via website by mid June.