SINGAPORE — A major emergency response was triggered in the early hours of Wednesday morning, June 24, 2026 after a ferocious fire tore through a three-storey semi-detached landed home off Whitley Road, leaving five people hospitalized and two others narrowly escaping injury.
The Singapore Civil Defense Force (SCDF) was alerted to the blaze at 9 Tan Sim Boh Road—a residential enclave located next to Thomson Medical Centre—at approximately 3:30 a.m.
When the first firefighting units arrived at the scene, they were met with a harrowing sight: intense flames had already engulfed the first and second floors of the three-storey property. Thick, choking black smoke had risen rapidly, completely filling the third floor and trapping occupants inside.
Firefighters quickly deployed a rescue ladder to reach the trapped residents, successfully saving a total of seven people from the burning structure. Among those rescued, five individuals were pulled to safety from a second-floor balcony using the rescue ladder, while another two individuals were safely guided out from the first floor of the home.
Paramedics evaluated all seven rescued occupants at the scene. Five of the victims were rushed to the Singapore General Hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation. The remaining two individuals declined further medical attention.
SCDF personnel deployed four water jets to combat the raging inferno, successfully bringing the flames under control and preventing the fire from spreading to adjacent homes in the tightly-packed landed enclave.
As dawn broke, SCDF personnel remained on-site conducting "damping-down" operations—a process involving the application of water to burnt surfaces to ensure no hidden hot spots could reignite the blaze.
The severe heat and smoke have left extensive structural and cosmetic damage across all three levels of the property. The exact cause of the fire remains unknown and is currently under active investigation by authorities.
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