Fire destroys most of coastal village in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – A huge fire on Sunday tore through a floating village on Borneo, reducing more than 1,000 homes to ash and affecting more than 9,000 residents, as flames raced unchecked across the tightly packed settlement.

Strong winds pushed the fire across more than 4 hectares, or about 10 acres of densely packed homes in the village of Kampung Bahagia, in the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah, as about 35 firefighters battled the blaze using water tankers, a nearby factory hydrant and seawater.

It is a coastal village where many Indigenous and migrant people – some of the country’s poorest residents – live in wooden stilt houses over water. They are some of Malaysia’s poorest residents.

Despite the village’s location on a bay, a low tide made it hard to get sufficient water for firefighting early Sunday.

“Four hose lines stretching 300 meters and 12 water jets were used to extinguish the fire,” said Jimmy Lagung, chief of fire and rescue station of Sandakan District.

The cause of the fire, which broke out about 1:30 a.m. Sunday, was still unknown later in the day and was under investigation by the fire department.

However, a local news outlet reported that the village head, Sharif Hashim Sharif Iting, said the blaze began in a house where someone lost control of a fire in a gas stove while cooking.

No deaths had been reported as of Sunday afternoon.so far, said George Abd Rakman, the Sandakan District police chief assistant commissioner, said several residents were hurt while trying to help others and salvage their belongings.

“This is a very large-scale and heartbreaking incident, involving 9,007 residents,” he told reporters Sunday in the village, which had about 1,200 homes. The area has been declared a disaster zone.

Sheets of zinc lay crumpled and blackened, stretching across the ground in every direction, as if the fire had flattened the entire village in a single sweep. Homes were no longer recognizable structures, just charred debris under a hazy sky.

The blaze was a humanitarian tragedy affecting thousands of residents in the blink of an eye, said Mustapha Sakmud, the minister in charge of Sabah and Sarawak Affairs in the Prime Minister’s Department, which encompasses many government agencies.

“Imagine, in a single night, there were children who lost their shelter, parents who lost all their possessions, and families who were left with nothing but the clothes on their backs,” he said in a statement Sunday.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia said the government was coordinating with the Sabah authorities to temporarily relocate those affected.

“The priority now is the safety of the victims and immediate assistance on the ground,” he said in a Facebook post Sunday.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.