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Thursday April 27, 2006

Family flees from burning bungalow

BY MARC LOURDES

KUALA LUMPUR: A bolt of lightning struck a bungalow in Jalan Semantan here causing electrical wires to short circuit and setting two floors of the house on fire.

The 11 family members and maids of Gamuda Holdings director Datuk Yahaya Yeop Ishak, who were in the house, managed to get out safely.

The lightning struck at 3.30pm at the height of a storm hitting the first floor bedroom which then caught fire.

The fire spread to the upper floors of the three-storey house destroying computer and electronic equipment as well as furniture.

Yahaya said his maid called him about the fire.

“The first thing I told her to do was get my wife out first,” he said, adding that his son, daughter-in-law, four grandchildren and four maids were at home at that time.

Euro RSCG art director Christophe Cham, 32, who works at the nearby Wisma Amanah Raya, said he saw workers at a nearby construction site shouting and gesticulating wildly.

“I opened a window and saw a lot of smoke in the air. I thought the building was on fire,” he said.

He ran out and realised that it was the house which had caught fire.

“I went to the house and saw a woman lying down. She looked shocked,” he said.

Cham said the fire engines had trouble getting to the house as the street was lined with illegally-parked cars.

Fire and Rescue Department senior operations officer Anuar Harun said the fire destroyed most of the third floor.

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