Interview - Oliver Smart: Bearing the scars of a fateful night – and a lucky escape

NEW Year's Eve should be a time for celebration, an opportunity to glance to the future and look to the past, to learn from what has gone before and make plans for the next 12 months.

On the evening of December 31, 2008, Oliver Smart, then 35, planned to meet with friends for a quiet meal and a drink, but a chance decision meant he will now remember the night for the rest of his life.

Mr Smart, from Millhouses, Sheffield, a successful financial adviser with a large insurance company, had spent Christmas with his mother, who lived in Goa, India, before flying to Thailand to see in 2009.

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His Thai girlfriend had flown to meet him, and when they returned to Bangkok at about 6am on New Year's Eve, they both decided to relax and recover from their journey.

The couple spent the day in their apartment, and later headed out to the city's fashionable Ekamai district, which is full of upmarket restaurants and nightclubs.

They had a meal and discussed going home again, but on the "spur of the moment" decided to go to the Santika nightclub, where they knew some of

their friends would be spending the night.

It was a decision that would leave him scarred forever and on medication for the rest of his life.

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Mr Smart said: "Just after we arrived everyone was given sparklers and suddenly fireworks were being set off. A few minutes later, people around us were starting to look up and there was a small fire in the corner of the roofspace.

"It didn't look like much and when people saw it they weren't exactly panicking. But the spread was instantaneous. The flames went straight across the whole of the roof and at that point everybody just went nuts.

"It was chaos, every man for himself. People were literally fighting each other to get out.

"At some point the electricity was cut so it went black and it was also getting very smoky and hot. All you could hear was screaming and I remember hearing bottles behind the bar exploding in the heat.

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"You had a mass swell of people – there were 800 to 1,000 people in the club – all those people were trying to get out of one door. All I was thinking at that point was 'This is it – this is the end of the road'."

Mr Smart has a vague memory of being pulled from the burning building by a firefighter, but then went completely blank until he emerged from a coma 23 days later with 30 per cent burns.

His family had gathered in Bangkok to be with him, but they suffered another blow after Mr Smart's stepfather died of a heart attack after arriving in the Thai capital.

He said: "I was put on a Lufthansa plane, which had intensive care facilities on board, and I was flown to Frankfurt. The flight lasted about 10 hours, but I can remember about 10 minutes."

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Medics then kept Mr Smart in intensive care for just two days at the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield, before transferring him to a burns unit where he was told how to treat his injuries at home.

He had been on morphine for more than a month, and when that was stopped, the pain immediately became excruciating. But the 36-year-old was determined to get on with his life.

He added: "At that point dressing the burns was very, very painful – that was the time the pain was worst. The doctors also wanted me to start having a bath a day and I used to dread it.

"I can pick out three or four times when I wanted to give up, and that was the worst. I went to live at my dad's place in Sheffield and my bosses came to see me. I had already made my mind up to go back to work. By April I was able to work from home and by the end of May I was almost back to normal."

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Mr Smart said getting his life back on track had helped him deal with the trauma. He has since been back to the Bangkok hospital where he was treated and visited the site of the Santika nightclub.

He said: "It was a little bit sad just seeing the rubble of where the club used to be. Somebody should be brought to justice, because my family went through an awful lot of expense and emotional heartache.

"My mum will not go back to Thailand ever again, there are too many bad memories for her there, but it is still my holiday destination of choice. I still have an apartment there."

But despite the constant reminders, including having to wear special gloves, he does not think about that night every day.

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"I am not bitter, in fact, I feel lucky because I could have died and I didn't.

"I could have been very badly facially scarred. I have got 30 per cent burns and I will be scarred for ever, but looking at what happened to other people, I think that is a small price to pay.

"I am not scared of going in to other nightclubs, I have been in Thai nightclubs since. I don't avoid things like that because I like to think I am rational and logical.

"What are the chances of being in a nightclub that burns down? One in several million. It happened to me – I can't change that. It probably won't happen again."

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