Parkway Parade shopping mall, one of the most popular in the east, will remain closed until further notice, after a fire broke out in a store late on last Sunday night.
While the retail mall remains closed as the management continues checks and rectification works, the office tower and banks on level one will be open today, as they were yesterday, said Parkway Parade.
Apologising for the inconvenience, the mall added that its carpark will also be closed today until further notice. The mall did not give a reason for the closure.
The Straits Times understands that the fire broke out in Fox Kids and Baby, a clothing store on the second floor of the Marine Parade mall.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said it was alerted to the fire close to midnight. Upon arrival, officers located the blaze in a storeroom, entered by force and put out the flames with a water jet.
A spokesman for Wing Tai, which distributes the Fox brand here, said it is looking into what happened.
A burnt smell lingered in the air inside the mall at about noon yesterday. Workers in safety helmets were seen coming out of the building.
Staff at the entrance told arriving shoppers that the mall was closed for the day. More than 50 people were seen outside an entrance. Some said they had been waiting for hours for more information.
One of them, Madam Jenny Ong, 52, who works at a second-floor outlet, said she arrived at 10am. She was told about the fire and that the mall would reopen at noon. She and two others who work on the same floor found out about the closure only when they returned two hours later.
She said: “I was worried that it was my shop, a children’s clothing shop on the second level.”
Madam Margaret Chia, 68, a part-time retail assistant at department store Isetan, said: “We received a call in the morning telling us not to come, but we came anyway… We are worried, we heard that the store had been drenched.”
A 40-year-old housewife, who declined to be named, said the mall was dark and the stores were closed when she arrived in the morning to buy groceries. She said: “People had been waiting for hours. They should have told us it was not going to open (by noon).”