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SMOKED OUT: SCDF officers grapple with the black smoke billowing out of the third-floor flat in Toa Payoh Lorong 1. A fire engine and an ambulance had been dispatched to the scene. -- ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE
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A MID-AFTERNOON blaze in a flat in Block 111 along Toa Payoh Lorong 1 yesterday sent about a dozen residents scurrying to the ground floor.
A Chinese woman in her 40s, believed to be an occupant of the third-floor unit that caught fire, was taken to the Singapore General Hospital. No one else was hurt.
A spokesman for the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said that she had no physical injuries and was being treated for shock.
The blaze damaged part of the hall and a bedroom in the three-room flat.
The SCDF said that, following a call about the fire at about 4.40pm, it sent out rescue vehicles, including a fire engine and an ambulance.
At the scene, thick black smoke was billowing out of the unit and reached the fifth floor.
The owners of a fruit shop on the ground floor hastily rolled down their shutters as police cordoned off the area.
Mrs B.S. Ling, a restaurant supervisor who lives in the fourth floor flat directly above where the fire was, said that she had just stepped out of the shower when she saw black smoke coming from the window below hers.
She said in Mandarin: 'I thought someone had set rubbish on fire. But then I saw the smoke and got a huge fright. I called out to some policemen below and they came up and escorted me downstairs.'
Software engineer Adi Surya, 32, an Indonesian who lives with his wife next to the affected unit, said that two women in their 20s lived there with their mother, who is in her 40s.
He added that the older daughter was given to strange behaviour. She would go around knocking on the gas meter or slamming doors. Once, she hurled water and glass objects at his front door.
He added that she used to argue with her mother into the wee hours every night, 'but recently it's just once a week'.
Mrs Ling also said that things had sometimes been thrown around in the flat.
The SCDF is still probing into the cause of the fire.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY ESTHER TAN
Check out the aftermath of the fire. Log on to www.straitstimes.com for our free video news
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