‘Kampung spirit’ on display as residents rush to put out fire outside neighbour’s Woodlands flat

SINGAPORE: A frightening incident occurred outside a unit on the eighth floor of a residential estate in Woodlands Avenue, after a loud bang was heard and flames were seen shooting into the sky. However, this incident did not stop other residents from demonstrating the ‘kampung’ spirit and helped one another to resolve the problem.

According to case details, the fire incident happened in the evening of Sep 14. As reported by Shin Min Daily News, during the critical moments, off-duty civil defence personnel, other members of the public, and various residents demonstrated a strong sense of village spirit to extinguish the fire. 

When reporters visited the affected area the next day, they discovered that the corridor had been blackened by smoke, some of the walls had fallen off, and several workers were repairing the lights. In an interview, a 30-year-old female resident who lived on the same floor where the incident happened declared that she had heard several ‘bangs’ from inside her unit, and when she went out to check, there were flames shooting up in front of her neighbour’s house. 

With this, her husband immediately grabbed their fire extinguisher to put out the fire. Moreover, she knew that a mother, two children aged 1 and 5, and an elderly person lived in the unit where the fire occurred, so she immediately called the female resident, telling her to open the door and escape, while shouting in the corridor, "Fire! Fire!". 

To help, there were also people who tried to pull the fire hose, while others brought buckets of water. Eventually, with the help of one another, they managed to extinguish the fire.

“An off-duty civil defence worker also rushed over and told everyone to evacuate to the other side of the corridor to wait,” a resident remarked. 

The Singapore Civil Defence Force shared that the fire involved a shoe rack in a public corridor on the eighth floor. The fire was extinguished by members of the public using fire hoses before firefighters arrived. 

No one was injured in the process, and the cause of the fire is still under investigation.

In similar news, there was a report that a woman hallucinated and believed that he was trapped inside an HDB flat. 

With this, she attempted to set fire to the doorway to have an escape route, which then resulted in a fire.

Read more about the news story here.