Race Course Road HDB flat fire: 88-year-old man dies
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Police officers had to force their entry into the locked flat in an attempt to save the occupants.
ST PHOTO: AZMI ATHNI
SINGAPORE – One of the victims of a fire in a Housing Board flat in Race Course Road on Aug 3 has died in hospital, the police said on Aug 5.
The 88-year-old man was among three people taken unconscious to hospital after the fire broke out at Block 684 Race Course Road, in Little India.
They had been trapped, along with two others, in the fifth-floor unit before being rescued by the police and the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), who were alerted to the fire at 7.10pm.
Officers from the Rochor Neighbourhood Police Centre forcibly gained entry into the locked flat in an attempt to save the occupants, said the police.
They rescued a woman from the unit, and she was among those taken unconscious to hospital.
The remaining four people were rescued by the SCDF shortly after.
According to the SCDF, a bedroom in the flat was ablaze when firefighters arrived.
The three unconscious persons were taken to Singapore General Hospital and the other two to Tan Tock Seng Hospital, said SCDF in a Facebook post on Aug 3.
They were aged between 55 and 88, said the police on Aug 5.
The fire was extinguished with a water jet, SCDF added.
About 50 residents were evacuated from the block, police said.
Investigations are ongoing.
This is the third deadly fire in about a week.
On July 31, a fire in a Clementi flat left one person dead, and two firefighters were taken to hospital for burn injuries.
On July 28, a 70-year-old man died after a fire broke out in an HDB flat in MacPherson.
There were six fire fatalities and 94 fire injuries in 2025, according to SCDF’s annual statistics report in February 2026. There were seven fire deaths and 80 fire injuries in 2024.
According to the report, the total number of fires here increased by 3 per cent – from 1,990 in 2024 to 2,050 in 2025. Of these, 1,051 involved fires at residential buildings.
Unattended cooking and electrical fires – including faults in electrical wiring or overloaded sockets – remained the top two causes of home fires.
Of the 304 cases of electrical fires at residential premises in 2025, 34 involved active mobility devices. These include personal mobility devices, power-assisted bicycles and personal mobility aids.
More people got hurt in fires – from 80 in 2024 to 94 in 2025.
