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28-year-old Nurul Azizah* (name changed for privacy) shared her story with IRL on how she discovered her Cyberjaya apartment was on fire, yet there was no fire alarm, no announcement, and no overall evacuation plan from the management.
At first, I thought someone was burning rubbish.
Nurul also posted her story to her Tiktok account @santanpecah.
When I woke up at 8 am that Tuesday, I opened the window and noticed some smoke rising up from the ground floor.
“Who is burning rubbish in the open at this time of day?” I wondered.
But as I went about my morning, the smell kept getting stronger and stronger. I started to get worried. Was there a fire? Shouldn’t the fire alarm be ringing nonstop?
I peeked out of my apartment door and took a look around. Something definitely wasn’t right. The air in the corridors felt suspiciously hot, and there was a stinging pain in my eyes.
At around 9 am, my husband and I gathered our things and took the lift to go downstairs. If there was a fire, why were the lifts still in service?
In any case, we took the lift down, praying it wouldn’t randomly malfunction. When we got to the basement floor, I noticed there was soot all over.
It was deathly quiet and the air was full of smoke. We went to get our car and immediately drove out of the basement carpark.
Had we just escaped a burning building? Why did no one tell us?
Images via @santanpecah.
Outside, I took a look at the building and was shocked to see plumes of thick, black smoke rising out of the sides of the apartment building.
I saw the head of security run past me, covered head to toe in ash. But strangely, I didn’t hear any sirens. I couldn’t even hear a loudspeaker blaring instructions to evacuate the building.
We went back to our car to wait. There were other residents waiting by the side of the road.
“How long have you been waiting out here?” I asked.
“We have been here since 4am, that’s when the fire started,” they replied.
I was shocked – How come nobody told us? How could we have been asleep in a building that had been on fire for 4 hours and not realise it?
Some of the residents suspected that the cause of the fire was due to a short circuit from basement flood damage, while others claimed that it was due to a lighted cigarette.
I waited by the roadside and played with another resident’s cat. Strangely, there were no ambulances or paramedics around.
Management provided food and chairs and gave out panadol
Images via @santanpecah.
At 11am, management told us to wait in the management office until the issue was resolved.
When we asked why there was no fire alarm, the management’s response was:
“We apologise for the inconvenience, the reason for the lack of an alarm is because our alarm bell is currently under maintenance. However, we are doing our best to resolve the issue, please wait here until then.”
We were dissatisfied with the answer. What about all the families, pregnant women, children, elderly, OKU and pets potentially still in their apartment units?
On a small table, security had prepared a few packets of face masks, some water bottles for us, and some panadol for anyone experiencing headaches.
Yet, there was no briefing on what we residents should do, no announcements from anyone in charge, and no instructions to assemble at a public location.
I started feeling emotional. I was tired, I had a headache, and my eyes were streaming from the smoke.
When I coughed into a tissue, I could see smoke particles in the tissue – that’s how much smoke I had inhaled at that point.
But when we asked the management to call the paramedics, they responded saying that paramedics would only be called if there were any serious cases.
At around 2pm, the management gave us some food. They said the earliest we could enter the building was probably at 5pm.
Residents angrily asked the management why there was no SOP for evacuation
Images via @santanpecah.
At 5pm, we were informed that the resident tower and car park were still blocked from access.
We asked the management for a proper explanation: “Is this building even safe to stay in? Why didn’t you have a contingency plan for circumstances like this? What if someone suffocated in their sleep?”
However, the management just apologized over and over for the disruption. Many of us were angry with the lack of planning, but there was nothing else we could do about it.
After 7pm, it was getting dark, and yet the smoke was still everywhere. At this point, some of us had been stranded for 12 hours outside the building since 4am.
The building was still off-limits to the residents, so the management asked for our contact details and offered to put us all up at a nearby hotel for a 1-night stay.
Images via @santanpecah.
At 10pm, we were told that the fire had spread to the Mall (Lower Ground – Basement) area.
But since it was no longer burning in the residential units, we were finally allowed to re-enter the building.
Most of us went back inside to collect their belongings and evacuate the premises. We went back up to check for damage.
My husband and I contemplated moving to a different apartment, but we were worried about losing our deposit.
When we entered the apartments again, everything was covered in ash and soot.
Images via @santanpecah.
Everything, the walls, furniture, tabletops, and floors were caked in soot. Even the spiderwebs were covered in a thick layer of ash.
The emergency stairs were full of smoke and were dark, without any emergency lighting. We checked the smoke detector and speakers, but couldn’t tell what the issue was.
Maybe the alarm had sounded, but we had been too asleep to hear it? But our unit was right beside the alarm bell. It was too strange.
When we checked the basement, it was flooded. We were relieved that we’d driven the car out when we evacuated the building.
We are very disappointed in the way the evacuation process was handled by Skypark management
Images via @santanpecah.
After this experience, I feel traumatized any time I smell even a hint of smoke. It makes me terrified. I will never trust fire alarms for the rest of my life.
Till today, we are very much disappointed and angry with the evacuation process from the security officers, management, and Bomba fire fighting units.
To be honest, we’re in disbelief at how management and security seemed to allow residents to leave the building as late as noon, when the fire had started at 4am.
What they should have done was to check every apartment unit at 4am for residents and inform them about the faulty alarm, and to tell them to leave.
I really hope all residents were safe and not suffering serious illness due to smoke inhalation.
However, we have to thank the management for the food, water, face mask, temporary shelter, temporary one-night stay, and for the cleaners who now have to clean up the soot.
We would also like to say a big thank you to the Bomba fire fighting units from Cyberjaya, Puchong, and Dengkil who did their very utmost to put out the fire since the early hours of the morning.
We were relieved that they had redirected the hot fumes from the basement carpark, without which the cars in the basement could have been severely damaged from the build-up of heat in there.
Our message to the management of Skypark: Please ensure that the fire alarm system is working properly. And please improve your training processes when it comes to evacuation from a high-rise building and crowd control.
(Editor’s note: We have reached out to Skypark management for comment. The management have extended their apologies towards the residents of Skypark. They would like to mention that they have updated their safety SOPs to ensure this incident will not happen again.)
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