'She saved our home': Man thanks helper for extinguishing 'fierce blaze' at Ang Mo Kio condo

A Singaporean man's home was saved from being engulfed in flames, thanks to the quick thinking of the family's domestic helper. 

Facebook user Lester Tan shared in a post last Friday (Feb 6) that the unexpected incident took place on Feb 5 at around 6.30pm.

Recounting the incident, Tan said that his helper had left the cooker hood running to clear the last bit of smoke before she headed back to her room but a few minutes later, she began to smell smoke. 

"Just the second day after Li Chun, the 'Fire Horse' decided to gallop straight into my kitchen last night. After reading plenty of news about fire coming from PMDs — didn’t expect ours to come from the cooker hood," said Tan. 

He added that the fire had "started small" with just the central fan area of the cooker hood burning. 

"But as she phoned us to shout fire, that small flame suddenly erupted into a fierce blaze all the way to ceiling, likely fuelled by the oil trapped in the filters," he added.

Tan described white smoke rushing into the living room as the brand-new smoke detector he'd bought "began screaming". 

As the flames grew bigger, a neighbour rushed over and urged the helper to get out of the house.

But she didn't.

"Luckily she remembered the fire drill I had conducted with her and the kids," said Tan.

'She saved our home'

"She grabbed the fire extinguisher I placed by the stove. And with incredible courage, she stood her ground and fought the raging fire, putting it out just in time. She saved our home," praised Tan.

According to Mothership, Tan's condo unit is located in Ang Mo Kio. 

"In just three minutes, the fire could have swallowed the entire kitchen of wooden cabinets, and in another five minutes it could have spread and swallowed the entire living room and all the bedrooms, all within 15 minutes," he added.

Tan's preparedness for such emergencies likely also saved his home from total destruction.

Having read plenty of news about PMD fires in recent years, Tan revealed that he had stocked his home with multiple fire extinguishers, a smoke detector, fire blankets, even smoke-masks, just in case. 

He also conducted fire drills with his daughters, practising how to leopard-crawl under smoke, identify escape routes and how to operate various type of extinguishers, added Tan. 

Tan suspected that the accumulated oil from the exhaust fan of the cooking hood might have sparked off the first flame from friction, before it grew into a bigger flame fuelled by the grease filters. 

"The funny thing is the new charcoal filter we ordered one week ago arrived the same morning but by evening the same day, just 15 minutes before we reached home, the fire happened," said Tan. 

He later confirmed that a contractor had determined the cause of fire to be "exhaust fan failure". 

AsiaOne has reached out to Tan for more information.

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esther.lam@asiaone.com