'I still remember the heat, the smoke': Victims recount the trauma of a house fire

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SINGAPORE — Six years after a fire burnt down most of her house, Ms Sharon Su and her family religiously checks that every single appliance in their home, from the kitchen to their bedrooms, is switched off after use.

Ms Su does not want history to repeat itself. “I was at church with my family. It seemed like a normal day,” the 48-year-old project manager recalled.The family rushed home and watched helplessly as their unit went up in flames. Some 80 per cent of their house was gone.

Residential fires are on the decline over the years, going from 2,657 fires in 2017 to 935 in 2022, according to the SCDF. Out of these, the most common causes of a residential fire are unattended cooking, electrical reasons and discarded items. “Almost every day, we would go back to our unit and take stock of the damage, for us to file our insurance. But even then, it was so overwhelming because we did not know how to go about it.”

In between, she would carry the bucket to the toilet to wash vegetables, as the kitchen still did not have a source of water. “We’ve spent maybe S$30,000 to S$40,000 on renovations after the fire,” said Ms Wei. “We haven’t started on insurance claims yet because renovation is still ongoing, but that will be an additional burden for us to complete.

He recalled looking through the wreckage and seeing his destroyed Fiido PMD seat in the rubble. Never again, he decided. Dan was asleep when his PMD exploded at around 6am in the corridor, and was trapped inside his own home as the smoke began to fill his flat. "What it's actually doing is making it very hard for you to heal from the primary trauma of the fire, because it's a constant reminder in your life on what happened."

 

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