SARAWAK has seen fewer longhouse fires in recent years, thanks to a programme to turn residents into volunteer firefighters, state Fire and Rescue Service Department chief Khirudin Drahman said.

According to the department’s statistics, there were 26 longhouse fires in 2017, and 66 of the buildings were razed. Property losses were put at nearly RM18 million.

In 2018, the number dropped to 24 fires, and only 15 longhouses were destroyed.

The numbers fell again the following years. In 2019, there were 21 blazes, of which 10 longhouses were razed.

In 2020, there were 16 fires, of which seven longhouses were destroyed.

Last year, however, the figures rose slightly, with 18 longhouse fires with 10 of the building burnt to the ground.

As of July 14 this year, 10 incidents were reported with five longhouses burnt down.

The state Fire and Rescue Service Department has been training able-bodied longhouse residents to form community emergency response teams.

Longhouses, the traditional form of community living in some Sarawak indigenous communities, can house an entire village of many families whose dwellings are subdivided within a long structure, made of wood and prone to fires.

The most common cause of longhouse fires is gas leaks from faulty stoves. Electricity overload and short circuits are also major causes.

Khirudin said in any blaze, the first five minutes is the most crucial period.

Failure to put it out within that time can turn what was initially deemed a “small fire” into a disaster, he told The Malaysian Insight.

He said it is quite impossible for the fire department to respond to most longhouse fires quickly as the majority of the state’s 5,000 longhouses are in rural areas.

“It’s the distance and the travelling time needed to respond. We admit we cannot reach most longhouses scattered across this vast state in time to fight the fires,” he said, adding that firemen are normally stationed in towns.

It can take half an hour to half a day to reach a burning longhouse in the interior, more so if the area has no road access.

Khirudin said it is due to these shortcomings that the department mooted the idea of training longhouse residents to be first responders.

The programme to train and form volunteer firefighting teams – pasukan bomba sukarela as it is known in Malay – is paying dividends, he said, even if they are just using basic firefighting equipment.

There are longhouses that have been saved because the residents acted early and effectively, said Khirudin.

One such case was the fire that broke out at the 21-door Rumah Dennis anak Nyalamba on January 11 in the town of Saratok, 115km from Kuching.

The action of eight residents, armed with six portable fire extinguishers, put out a mattress fire in one of the “bilik” (units) before the firemen arrived.

The eight have been feted by other longhouse residents as well as the fire department, for saving their community.

“In cases where the longhouse is saved from becoming ashes, it is because the residents had acted early before the fire got out of control,” Khirudin said.

The training programme has reached some 3,000 longhouses, teaching residents fire awareness and to identify a “champion” in the community – the person who will lead the response in the event of a blaze.

Normally, the champion is the “tuai rumah” or longhouse chief, said Khirudin.

“They will be trained to handle the situation until the firemen arrive. It is all about doing the right things before the real firefighters arrive,” he said.

Under the programme, the volunteers are trained on basic fire safety, how to fight fires when they are still in an early stage, how to handle the firefighting equipment they are supplied with such as the extinguishers, and how to identify fire hazards.

To date, the number of volunteer teams is 56, comprising 2,059 men and 412 women.

Training for the residents of the remaining 2,000 longhouses was interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and will resume soon, Khirudin said.

“Sarawak is as big as Peninsular Malaysia. In the peninsula, there are 270 fire stations while in Sarawak, there are only 38.

“The volunteers we have trained are important to their longhouse communities.” – July 24, 2022.