Fire at Ngee Ann City, shoppers and workers evacuated as a ‘precautionary measure’

SINGAPORE — Shoppers and workers were evacuated from an office tower at Ngee Ann City Shopping Centre on Wednesday (Sept 26), following a fire that occurred in the building.

In a Facebook post, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said that it responded to a fire alarm at Ngee Ann City’s Tower B around 5.10pm.

After it arrived, it found the source of the smoke to be from "a pile of smoldering trash" accumulated at the bottom of a ventilation shaft within a stairwell.

SCDF officers then extinguished the fire using a hosereel.

No injuries were reported at the popular mall along the Orchard Road shopping belt, but before the SCDF's arrival, people in Tower B were evacuated as a precautionary measure.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, the SCDF said.

Mr Edwin Tan, 27, told TODAY that he was heading up the escalator to a boutique shop on the third floor where he works part-time, when he heard an announcement informing patrons to evacuate the building. This was around 5.20pm.

While he did not see the fire, he saw smoke coming from the fourth floor of the mall.

“It didn’t seem very thick, but I could definitely smell it,” Mr Tan said.

As it was a weekday, there were not many people who had to be evacuated, and the process was orderly, he added. 

Ms Nicole Lim, a 28-year-old administrative assistant who works on level 18 of the office tower, heard the fire alarm going off at 5.15pm. She walked down the fire escape with her colleagues.

“I could smell smoke up at level 15… it was really smelly… but I saw it only at level three and four,” she said.

Responding to media queries, a spokesperson from StarHill Global Reit — which partly owns the mall — reiterated that there was no injury or damage to the property.

“We are working with SCDF and the managing agent (Ngee Ann Property Management) to investigate the cause of the fire. The building was evacuated, but re-entry was permitted at 6.55pm. There was no substantial disruption as tenants were back in business,” the spokesperson said.

Separately, a Ngee Ann City spokesperson said that it was “unable to ascertain what started the smoke incident at this moment as the investigation is still underway”.

“We were alerted to the smoke situation at around 5pm and once we had confirmed that the smoke fumes could not be contained, we immediately activated the evacuation protocol. The safety and protection of all our customers, tenants and staff is and always will be our top priority,” he said.

Adding that the mall conducts regular fire drills, the spokesperson noted that the evacuation was smoothly carried out within a “reasonable timeframe” of 15 to 20 minutes, and “everyone was accounted for”.