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100 residents evacuated after fire at Boon Keng coffee shop, 1 taken to hospital
A video showed the kitchen exhaust duct of a stall at a Boon Keng coffee shop on fire.
PHOTO: Screengrab from TikTok/thambiyarugaming, AsiaOne/Sean Ler
PUBLISHED ONDecember 04, 2025 10:50 AM
BYChing Shi JieSean Ler
About 100 residents living in a Boon Keng HDB block were evacuated after a fire broke out at a coffee shop slightly after midnight on Thursday (Dec 4).
The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said that it was alerted to the fire at Block 11 Upper Boon Keng Road at 12.30am.
When firefighters arrived, the kitchen exhaust duct of the coffee shop was on fire. Several stalls had heat and smoke damage.
SCDF then extinguished the blaze with two water jets. One person was assessed for smoke inhalation and taken to Singapore General Hospital, SCDF said.
PHOTO: AsiaOne/Sean Ler
When AsiaOne arrived at the scene this morning, a strong charred odour was still lingering in the air.
Several residents said that they immediately evacuated their homes after noticing the burning smell.
Sales manager Kaliraj, 38, said: “When we came out, it was already very smoky, the fire was up to the third, fourth floor.
“So we asked the neighbours to evacuate.”
They returned to their units at around 3.30am after the authorities told them it was safe to do so.
AsiaOne understands that the fire started from the zi char stall at the coffee shop, which later burned through the kitchen exhaust duct.
Several stall holders, whose stalls were damaged from the fire, were seen outside the coffee shop wearing worried looks.
One stall holder said he had been asleep when the fire broke out just below his flat.
The stall holder, who wished to be known as Chew, 40, added that firefighters had woken him up. By then, the four other coffee shop employees who lived with him had already evacuated.
He also scalded his hands while retrieving items from his stall, he said.
SCDF said that the cause of the fire is under investigation.
According to SCDF's annual statistics report released on Feb 13, the number of fires had increased in the past year — from 1,954 in 2023 to 1,990 in 2024.
SCDF attributed the rise to more fires at commercial, social and communal premises.
The number of deaths from fires also increased from three in 2023 to five in 2024.
