'I couldn't sleep thinking of the victims and their families': Woman who witnessed Kaki Bukit fire

SINGAPORE – She had just returned from the coffeeshop slightly before 1pm when she saw smoke billowing from the top of her neighbour’s unit at Synergy@KB.

Ms Vina Tai’s car workshop, on the fifth floor of the industrial building at 25 Kaki Bukit Road 4, is next door to a signage company that was ravaged by a blaze on Sept 19, resulting in the deaths of two men.

She quickly alerted the police and SCDF to the fire.

As the fire grew, six staff members from signage company Amen Industrial waited anxiously outside the unit. Ms Tai said she saw workers from other units had gathered on a narrow road outside the units.

Her voice trembling as she spoke to The Straits Times at her shop unit on Sept 20, Ms Tai said: “People were still standing around as black smoke filled half of the fifth floor.

“In the chaos, a staff member from the carpentry shop told me that two persons were trapped.

“It broke my heart when he said the person’s last words were ‘there’s too much smoke, I can’t breathe’.”

Subsequent calls to that person went unanswered. Ms Tai, 31, said she did not know the deceased men.

In that time, witnesses heard four to five explosions, apparently from inside Amen Industrial, before they were told to evacuate the fifth floor.

The two victims, aged 51 and 65, were found unconscious in a furniture carpentry business across from Amen Industrial.

They were friends of the business’ owner, and had gone there to meet him for lunch. They were in his office as he was running late, Chinese news daily Lianhe Zaobao reported on Sept 20.

The firefighters performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the two men, and they were taken unconscious to Changi General Hospital. They later died from their injuries, the police said.

The authorities have interviewed staff from Amen Industries.

While investigations into the cause of the fire are ongoing, Shin Min reported that the fire may have started when a printing machine in Amen Industrial had caught fire.

Ms Tai said: “I couldn’t sleep thinking of the deceased and their families. It happened so fast and there was nothing we could do.

“As we made our escape, one of the female staff of Amen Industrial was visibly shaken and couldn’t stop crying.”

Workers were allowed to return to the building in the late afternoon, after waiting more than two hours.

Fortunately for Ms Tai, her workshop was untouched by the fire.

At the shop across her unit, workers were seen on Sept 20 mopping up water at their shop premises and throwing away damaged wooden boards in the afternoon, when ST visited the building.

The empty Amen Industrial was soot-filled, strewn with charred items such as tables and cupboards.

At a carpentry shop a few doors away, a worker recalled how three of them were forced to leave their unit in a hurry.

Pointing to soot left on the ceiling of his unit, Mr Hong Koh Lieng, 63, said: “I was asleep at lunchtime, and I woke up only because of the thick smoke. I alerted my boss and we all left immediately. Luckily, none of us were hurt.”

ST has reached out to Amen Industrial for comment.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.