SINGAPORE – One person was found dead in a burning bedroom after a fire broke out in a Housing Board flat in Sembawang on Feb 24.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said it was alerted to the fire at Block 131C Canberra Crescent at 12.45pm.

Firefighters from Yishun Fire Station arrived to find black smoke billowing from a unit on the third floor and forced their way into the smoke-logged flat, SCDF said in a Facebook post.

The blaze is believed to have started in the burnt bedroom of the three-room flat, where the man was found and pronounced dead by an SCDF paramedic.

Firefighters put out the flames with a water jet.

Police and SCDF evacuated about 30 people from the second- and fourth-floor units as a precaution, though the fire did not damage the neighbouring flats, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung, an MP for Sembawang GRC, said in a Facebook post.

Paramedics assessed three people from neighbouring flats for smoke inhalation, and a woman, 40, was taken conscious to Singapore General Hospital.

When The Straits Times visited the scene of the fire at about 5pm, it found that some of the windows of the affected flat were shattered.

A resident living on the same floor who wanted to be known as Ms Ng said her maid saw smoke entering their flat at around 1pm and alerted the family.

She told ST that when she evacuated her flat with her two children, aged seven and nine, she saw firefighters trying to put out the blaze. The 38-year-old, who works in merchandising, added that she also heard shouting coming from inside the affected unit.

“There was a lot of smoke along the corridor and it was quite scary,” she said, adding that the person who died is an elderly man who lived alone.

“He was friendly and would say hi with a smile whenever we saw each other along the corridor,” she said.

Ms Diljan Shaik Arif Ali, a 44-year-old housewife who lives two floors above the affected flat, said she saw thick black smoke entering through her living room window at around 12.45pm.

She quickly went door to door on the third and fourth floors to warn her neighbours about the fire.

“I realised that the burning unit was on the third floor and quickly called SCDF,” she said.

Both SCDF and the police are investigating the cause of the fire.

This marks the second known death caused by a home fire this year in a span of only two months.

According to SCDF’s latest annual statistics report, there were three fatalities in 2023 and eight in 2022. Close to 2,000 fires were recorded in 2023, marking an 8.6 per cent rise from 1,799 in 2022.

The top two causes were electrical fires and unattended cooking flames.

The number of fires sparked by mobility devices – personal mobility devices, power-assisted bicycles and personal mobility aids – also spiked, reversing a three-year decline from 2019 to 2022.