SRI AMAN: A total of 28 families and 84 people were made homeless when two longhouses at the Jongkong Panjai, Jungkong Empelajau road were destroyed in a fire early yesterday morning.
The longhouses involved are Rumah Langgau Selumbang and Rumah Junit Duyu which are only separated by a distance of one metre only when the incident occurred.
Sri Aman District Police chief, DSP Haji Othman Sulaiman said the fire involving a total of 84 victims and had caused injury to one senior citizen.
“The elderly person concerned has been sent to Sri Aman Hospital for further treatment while the other fire victims are temporarily placed at Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK) Bakong here,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Fire and Rescue (BBP) Sri Aman reported that they received a call about the fire at 3:55 am and sent a total of eight firefighters to the scene.
“The fire was believed to have started from the kitchen of an apartment or door number three in Rumah Langgau. It caused the entire longhouse to be totally destroyed before it spread to Rumah Junit just a metre away.
“However Rumah Junit suffered only 70 per cent damage thanks to our speedy act of extinguishing the fire using two streams of four nozzles along 200 feet from open water sources (water drain) here,” the department’s spokesperson said.
The fire was successfully under control at 4:36 am whereas the operation ended at 9.15am.
Also involved in the operations were three policemen from the Lingga police station and three Civil Defence Department (CDD) personnel here.
