A 13-YEAR-OLD Bruneian girl tragically lost her life in a fire accident yesterday when the house where she was living at Kg Lambak, Berakas ‘A’ was gutted.

The police found her body and confirmed the deceased was a young local girl.

The girl, a Form two student, was believed to be asleep when the raging fire gutted the house.
According to Noor Azman Hj Sulaiman, the uncle of the girl, who first discovered the smoke, ” I was taking a nap after returning from Kuala Belait and then suddenly the power went off.

“I went outside to see if it’s a black out but I saw smoke coming out of the top floor of the house:
“There are four families of 26 persons staying in the house, so I yelled ‘fire’ to help them run out of the house.”
He believes that her niece was sleeping in her room when the fire spread rapidly in the double-storey house.
Fire and Rescue personnel from Berakas and Lambak Fire Stations with assistance
from BSB Fire Station rushed to the scene around 8.46pm but the fire had already spread swiftly.

Later, one of the fire engines ran out of water and the firemen’s efforts to combat the inferno was hampered when they could not locate the fire hydrant. The fire hydrant was hidden amidst a pile of wooden planks and sand. It took them five crucial minutes to find the water source.

Senior Supt Muhd Shahreeni Yussof, Commanding Officer of’ Operasi C’, urged the public not to dump objects around fire hydrants that could obstruct fire fighters’ to access them during emergencies.

The Head of Village for Berakas B, Major (rtd) Mohammad Jair bin Hj Abd Wahab, who was also at the scene, said this is the fourth blaze in the village since he was elected as head of village.

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