Fire razes eight houses, 50 left homeless
GEORGE TOWN: About 50 people from eight families were left with only the clothes on their backs after eight homes and a car workshop were destroyed in a fire near Taman Cemerlang, Jelutong yesterday.
There were no fatalities in the fire but a firefighter and a man near the scene suffered from shortness of breath after inhaling the thick smoke. They were given first aid before being sent to Penang Hospital for further treatment.
Jalan Perak Fire and Rescue Station chief A’azelan Hassan said, they received a report about the incident at 11.44 am before two fire engines were deployed to the scene.
“When the first engine arrived at the scene, four adjoining houses there were fully ablaze while a few more (houses) and the car workshop were also engulfed in flames,” he told reporters.
He said the firefighters had difficulty accessing the road to the site of the fire as the roads were too narrow and they had to park the fire engines about 500 metres from the scene.
The structure of the houses, mostly made of wood and build close together, caused the fire to spread quickly and thick smoke enveloped the area until it could be seen from a distance of about five kilometres.
He said more than 100 officers and firefighters with five fire engines, including from Paya Terubong and Lebuh Pantai fire stations assisted by a volunteer firefighting team were involved in putting out the blaze, which took about two hours.
“So far, the cause and the amount of loss incurred in the fire is still under investigation,” he said.
Meanwhile, there was chaos when a Myanmar woman living in one of the houses razed by the fire claimed her three children were in the house, but investigation by the fire personnel found no bodies.
The woman, known as Jamaliah, in her 30s, cried and shouted the names of two girls and a boy, aged two to seven years, before she was pacified by the people there.
The situation calmed down after the woman’s husband, also a Myanmar national, came there and informed that all the children were safe and that he had taken them for a meal before the fire.
Jamaliah said she was thankful her children were safe and had not expected her husband to take them out to eat because when she went to work at a eatery there, her children were asleep.
Bernama
