Immediately after the tragedy, chief minister Hajiji Noor called for current procedures in the MERS999 system, now centralised in Putrajaya, to be changed. The fire claimed the lives of Matthew Wong, 50, his wife Jecky Vun Kon Fung, 48, and their sons Brendan, 18, and Eric, 15. By the time they arrived, the fire had spread from the ground floor to the top part of the house.” “This led to the team having to get the correct information in order to arrive at the actual location. The delay was caused because the firemen followed the printed call sheet containing the inaccurate address, he said in a statement here today. This follows claims that firefighters had lost precious seconds in responding to the blaze that claimed the lives of a family of four in Taman Hungab in Penampang here on Tuesday as the distress call had to be routed to Putrajaya first under the Malaysian Emergency Response Services (MERS999) system.Įxpressing the department’s condolences over the deaths, Sabah fire and rescue department director Md Ali Ismail, however, said minutes were lost after the firefighters from the Penampang station missed the location as a result of the inaccurate information provided by the caller.Īli said the fire started around 2.30am and the firemen arrived at the scene at 3.04am. KOTA KINABALU: The fire department has revealed that its men arrived late on the scene of a deadly fire because one of the callers gave the wrong address and not because of a problem with the call routing of the emergency response system. The deadly fire in Taman Hungab in Penampang claimed the lives of Matthew Wong, his wife Jecky Vun Kon Fung, and their sons Brendan and Eric.