Yinuo "Ginger" Jiang straightened in her wheelchair, wiped her eyes and took the court microphone firmly in her right hand.
"I came to this country because I love Australia" the softly spoken young woman said.
"I think that's the reason my friend was here as well ... Please find out what happened to my friend."
On September 6, 2012, Ms Jiang and Ping Kang "Connie" Zhang were forced to leap from the window of their fifth floor Bankstown unit as it was consumed by a ferocious fire.
"I thought, 'if I don't jump I will die in here'," Ms Jiang said, crying.
"Then I just jumped."
Ms Jiang survived the fall, with severe leg injuries that have forced her to remain in a wheelchair.
Ms Zhang did not. Her death is now the subject of a coronial inquest which opened at the NSW Coroner's Court on Monday.
In his opening address to the inquest, counsel assisting Stephen Rushton SC said that if the unit complex known as Euro Terrace had been fitted with a sprinkler system, the fire would not have taken hold.
"The big issue is whether this building ... was required to have sprinklers," Mr Rushton said.
A source close to the inquest confirmed an earlier report that, at the time of the fire, the Australian Building Code required that residential unit complexes that were 25 metres high were required to have sprinkler systems.
Euro Terrace was 24.92 metres high - just eight centimetres short of the sprinkler threshold.
The inquest heard that, sprinklers aside, the building was not compliant with safety standards and this remained the case.
"You will hear that the complex never complied with the relevant safety standards, either at the completion of construction, at the time of the fire, and that it doesn't comply now," Mr Rushton said.
Mr Rushton said the exact cause of the fire at the complex was unclear.
Hindering the investigation into this aspect was the fact that one of the tenants in the unit when the fire took hold, Jason Zeng, has since been deported and cannot give evidence.
However, Mr Rushton said an investigation had found that the fire had probably started in a metal waste bin on the balcony, possibly from a cigarette butt that ignited a flammable oil-like substance.
So quickly and ferociously did the fire spread, producing thick black smoke, that Ms Zhang and Ms Jiang could not escape and instead tried to seek refuge in a bedroom.
"The fire and smoke were too strong behind me, I tried to climb on the window to breathe," Ms Jiang said.
"Then I realised the metal bar between the window had melted on my hand ... I couldn't breathe anymore."
The fire spread from the unit to the rest of the complex, forcing the evacuation of scores of residents, many of whom suffered smoke inhalation.
The owners of the unit where the fire began had also built a wall inside the structure so that they could rent out an extra bedroom, with up to five people regularly living in a dwelling that was designed for three.
"There's no evidence that the completion of this fourth bedroom was ever approved by Bankstown council or the body corporate," Mr Rushton said.
On the day of the tragedy, a fire door designed to contain fires from spreading to the rest of the building stood ajar – propped open with a dumbbell.
The inquest continues.
