Two taken to hospital over two PMD-related fires
Two fires linked to personal mobility devices (PMDs) broke out yesterday morning.
One of them took place at 11.15am in a seventh-storey flat in Block 106 Bedok North Avenue 4, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said in a Facebook post.
It said: "The fire, which involved the contents of a kitchen, was extinguished by SCDF using one water jet."
A male occupant of the unit was taken to Singapore General Hospital for smoke inhalation, it said.
"About 40 occupants from the affected block self-evacuated before the arrival of SCDF."
About 40 minutes later, SCDF responded to another PMD-related fire in an e-scooter shop in Lorong 19 Geylang.
"The fire, which involved the contents of a storage room within the e-scooter shop, was extinguished by SCDF using one water jet," SCDF said in the same post.
"A worker from the shop was conveyed to Singapore General Hospital for burn injuries."
SCDF said preliminary investigations showed that the source of both fires was electrical in origin from PMDs that were being charged.
In the first half of this year, there were 49 fires related to PMDs, an average of about two a week.
In the worst of these cases, home owner Goh Keng Soon, 40, died in hospital on July 20, two days after he was rescued unconscious from a burning flat in Bukit Batok.
The blaze was linked to three e-scooters found burnt in the unit.
The Land Transport Authority encourages all PMD owners to use UL2272-certified devices and to look out for the UL2272 certification marks when buying a PMD.
Owners of non-UL2272-certified PMDs are encouraged to dispose of their devices at designated points as soon as possible.
The authority is facilitating this process at 181 spots across the island at no cost to e-scooter owners.
E-scooter owners are required by law to have their devices UL2272-certified by July 1 next year.
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