Two dead after fire in Geylang

SINGAPORE — Two people have died in a fire early this morning (April 3) in a private residential unit along Geylang Lorong 6.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), which was alerted to the fire at around 4am, arrived at the scene within 5 minutes and observed black smoke coming out a second floor unit.

The SCDF entered the unit with two water jets and found two people lying motionless in one of the rooms.

They were immediately brought out of the unit. Paramedics pronounced them dead at the scene.

The SCDF extinguished the fire within 30 minutes and conveyed three other persons to Tan Tock Seng and Singapore General Hospital. The cause of fire is under investigation, said the SCDF.

The two people who died were believed to be foreign workers. An eyewitness who called the police, Mr Yap Hong Guan, woke up some time after 3am when black smoke started coming out of the affected unit.

The 70-year-old, who lived in the affected building, saw seven to eight foreign workers dashing out of the unit.

One of them drove a lorry, normally parked at a first-storey car park and used for transporting them to work, and parked it just under the unit’s windows. After a while, about 5 to 6 foreign workers jumped out of the unit from a second storey window onto the lorry, he said.

Shards of glass from a shattered window, covered with soot, were seen on the ground.

Mr Yap, who stayed at the four-storey building for 36 years, could not remember when exactly foreign workers started moving in.

“They come in and out. Every month, the people change,” Mr Yap told TODAY. He estimates that there were about 10 to 20 people living in the affected unit.

Based on the smell of food coming from the unit in the wee hours of each morning, Mr Yap believed workers were cooking when the fire broke out, possibly due to electrical wire problems.