SINGAPORE: A fire broke out on Saturday night at Sultan Gate in Kampong Glam, destroying four traditional shophouses.
It also threatened to spread to nearby popular food and beverage outlets.

Fire fighters arrived at the scene five minutes after they received the call at 9.45pm.

Of the four shophouses ablaze, one was a rubber shoe shop, another was a blacksmith shop and two were vacant units.

Major Vincent Lim, Ground Commander, Singapore Civil Defence Force, says: "Because this is a shophouse fire, the risk is that the fire will spread through the roof to the other units. We saw the fire was already spreading through the roof so our first priority was to prevent it from spreading further, to surround the fire, and contain it."

This was a dangerous operation for the fire fighters as the flooring of the shophouses was made of wood and was likely to collapse when fire fighters entered to put out the fire.

Eyewitnesses say the fire originated from the second floor of this blacksmith shop.

The traditional blacksmith shop is one of the oldest of its kind in Singapore, and students used to often go there for education tours. Unfortunately, there is nothing left of it now except charred wood.

Tony Seow, Tenant of burnt shophouse, says: "There's a lot of sparks maybe because of the metal work and the wood, and there's a cylinder in there. Sparks is what we were worried about because of the possibility of an explosion or something like that."

Tony had just rented one of the vacant shophouses which were ablaze. Fortunately, there's nothing inside the shop except chairs and some documents.

The fire was in control under 20 minutes and there were no casualties.

What is sad is the fact that some of Singapore's traditional shophouses were destroyed. - CNA/so