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SINGAPORE: A fire, which broke out in Golden Mile Tower – an office and shopping complex along Beach Road, on Saturday (Aug 31) – has been put out.
In a Facebook post at 2.30pm, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) described the incident as a “multi-vehicle fire”. It was alerted to the fire at around 12.50pm.
“The fire, which involved multiple cars at the car park, was extinguished by SCDF using two water jets,” said SCDF, adding that about 45 people were evacuated by the police and SCDF.
Three people suffered from smoke inhalation, but they declined to be sent to the hospital, said SCDF.
Preliminary findings indicate that the cars involved in the fire were not electric vehicles, according to SCDF, which is investigating the cause of the fire.
Fire investigators were still at the car park on level 6 at around 4pm, with police telling CNA that the level was “not cleared yet”.
A CNA reporter observed that tenants from levels one to five were allowed back into the building at around 3.45pm and that there was some flooding in the basement and water dripping from the ceiling at level two.
Earlier at 2.30pm, a CNA reporter spotted at least nine SCDF vehicles parked outside Golden Mile Tower. A few firefighters were seen walking out of the building.
Mr Jimmy Myo, a kitchen helper at Golden Mile Thien Kee steamboat restaurant in the basement of the building, said that the fire alarm rang at about 1.30pm. He was told by his boss to evacuate and roughly 11 employees then made their way to the entrance of the building.
Mr Myo, 36, said he heard that there had been a fire at the sixth-floor car park with around six cars burning. The staff waited for around 20 minutes before returning to their restaurant but were asked to evacuate again.
Photos and videos of the fire, which began to emerge online at around 1pm, showed thick, black smoke billowing from the upper floors of the side of the building facing Golden Mile Complex.
In one photo, more than a dozen vehicles, which look to be of the same make, are engulfed in flames. The vehicles appear to be in a car park on an upper floor of the building.
Social media posts from over a year ago showed similar vehicles parked in the same location. The posts state that the vehicle is the Honda N-Van. The model is not available from Singapore’s only official Honda dealer, Kah Motors.
Golden Mile Tower was built in the 1970s and currently houses a mix of restaurants, offices and the indie cinema The Projector. The building is also a terminal for buses travelling to and from Malaysia and Thailand.
Adjacent to Golden Mile Tower is the 300-room Hotel Traveltine and next to that is Golden Mile Complex, which is currently undergoing construction and restoration work.
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