Kitchen Exhaust Duct Fire at Coffee Shop in Tiong Bahru

March 18, 2021

A kitchen exhaust duct was invovled in the fire that broke out at a coffee shop in Tiong Bahru on Saturday morning, 13 March 2021.

As this story about a coffee shop highlights, commercial kitchen exhaust duct systems continue to feature prominently in commercial building fire events.

Stomp was alerted to the fire and photos of smoke drifting through the neighbourhood were shared.

“It was super smokey and hard to breathe for those staying around the Kim Tian Road area,” said witness Georgina.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) told Stomp they were alerted to a fire at Block 18 Jalan Membina at 8am.

SCDF extinguished the fire using two water jets.

The nearby condos were shrouded in a thick veil of smoke, almost similar to the haze ‘seasons’ of years gone by according to MS News.

The smell of burning smoke would certainly not be something Tiong Bahru residents would ideally want to wake up to, especially over the weekends.

Nonetheless, we are thankful that nobody was injured as a result of the fire.

Coffee shops and restaurants located withinin buildings are a fire hazard if….

Kitchen exhaust duct systems are not properly maintained. They present a higher risk of a significant fire event.

Systems that are not periodically inspected, maintained/cleaned will be subject to a build-up of oil, grease, and other inflammable materials within the duct, filters, gutters, and on the internal surfaces of the hood.

When a restaurant is located in a larger building or complex, such as a multi-storey residential development, hotel, hospital, mall, airport or the risks increase exponentially. A fire in a kitchen exhaust system in Heathrow Airport shut down three terminals, delayed or cancelled hundreds of flights, and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in losses that far exceeded the physical damage bill. That fire spread through 200m of exhaust ductwork to a plantroom before it was extinguished.

State regulatory authorities, local councils, insurance companies, building owners, facilities managers, and landlords all impose maintenance responsibilities on the owners and operators of kitchen exhaust duct systems. They generally require that the building owner must not fail to maintain fire safety-related systems.

If you think your kitchen exhaust ventilation system does not meet current standards or represents a fire risk, you should contact a trusted kitchen exhaust duct ventilation company to arrange a fire risk assessment.

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