By DayakDaily Team
KUCHING, June 9: A 66-year-old man put his life at risk to save his eight grandchildren and a son after their family home was destroyed in a fire at Kampung Jeriah Abang Ramli, Jalan Oya Lama, in Sibu, on Sunday (June 7).
In an interview with Bernama, Umar Sidee said he and his wife were at an orchard approximately six metres from their two-storey house, which housed 19 family members from three households, when the 11am incident occurred.
His grandchildren, aged four to 14, were watching television on the ground floor while his son, who is in his 20s, was upstairs.
“My wife suddenly shouted that our house was on fire. At the same time, I heard several explosions. As soon as I saw flames spreading from the back of the house, I ran inside and brought out all my grandchildren before rushing upstairs to wake up my son,” Bernama reported him as saying on Monday (June 8).
Umar, who is a former armed forces member, said he and several villagers later tried to extinguish the fire using buckets of water, but the blaze spread too quickly.
Firefighters who arrived at the scene later instructed residents to move away as conditions became increasingly dangerous, leaving them to watch the house being engulfed by flames.
While the family is safe, the fire had destroyed a home that Umar had built gradually over nearly four decades after he retired from the armed forces in 1995. — DayakDaily
