By Sanele Chadwick
A woman was left stuck inside a retail shop while a fire alarm went off at Saint Luke's shopping mall last week.
A blaze broke out in the Westfield car park, causing shoppers to evacuate. But one woman became trapped inside Cotton On.
Saint Luke's mall is a busy place for shoppers on Friday afternoon, but for Rose French she got more than she bargained for.
“I smelt the smoke, and then I heard the sirens,” she says. “And I'm like ‘dude, I think there's a fire’.”
Ms French was inside the Cotton On changing rooms when the alarm sounded. When she came out, she noticed the doors to the shop were shut and she was trapped inside.
She says she thought immediately of the Doha mall fire in which the New Zealand Weekes' triplets died.
She started jumping and banging on the door, when a couple of Fire wardens came.
“They're like, ‘get out of the shop’. ‘I can't.’ ‘Use your key.’ ‘I don't work here.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘There's a fire.’ I'm like, ‘what do I do?’"
Ms French says the wardens' attempts to bust the door failed, and one went to find a Cotton On worker with a key to unlock the door.
“The girl from Cotton On came in and was like ‘oh, sorry, key, unlock’ and let me out. She said, ‘if you broke my door, you're paying for it’ and laughed.”
But Ms French believes Westfield needs to look at its evacuation procedures.
Westfield Saint Luke's is carrying out their own investigation, and confirmed to 3 News a woman had in fact been trapped inside Cotton On during a fire alarm.
Westfield assures the public they have the right procedures in place and is working with Cotton On to find out what happened.
Ms French says she's now cautious of visiting Westfield malls by herself, but has been back with a friend.
3 News