Fire breaks out in Marsiling Crescent flat, no one hurt
SINGAPORE - Hotel security officer Poad Ashik, 57, was about to turn in at 9am on Tuesday (May 24) after a night at work when a burnt smell caught his attention.
He looked down from his kitchen window and saw smoke billowing out of the unit directly below his, which had caught fire.
A fire had broken out at a 12th floor unit in Block 217, Marsiling Crescent - the second fire in the estate this month.
Mr Ashik called the the Singapore Civil Service Defence Force (SCDF), which said it was alerted at about 9.10am.
It dispatched two fire engines, one red rhino, one ambulance and three support vehicles.
When they arrived, SCDF officers forced open the door to the flat and extinguished the fire with two water jets within 10 minutes.No one was in the unit.
Five people from the 13th floor were evacuated and there were no casualties, the SCDF said.
SCDF is investigating what caused the fire, which was confined to a bedroom.
When the Straits Times arrived at the scene yesterday, there was broken, charred glass on the corridor in front of the affected bedroom window.
Inside the bedroom, plaster had peeled off the walls and ceiling, which were burned black. Wires dangled from the ceiling.
While furniture in the living room and the kitchen did not appear burnt, water had flooded the floor.
The tiles of Mr Ashik's bedroom still felt warm from the fire when The Straits Times visited his unit. Soot had smudged parts of the walls close to the window and dirtied his bedsheet.
He said: "I will have to change my bedsheet because there is all dust. I will mop the room and sleep outside … the heat is still there (in the room) also".
Ms Joey Lin, 33, who quickly evacuated her boyfriend's unit on the 13th floor, said: "Just now I was a little shocked. I couldn't see anything while on the corridor just now, it was shrouded in smoke. We slowly walked to the stairway."
-- ST