Photo shows the fire at its height along the front portion of the longhouse.
MARUDI: The 28-door Long Aton longhouse in Tinjar basin was completely destroyed by a fire that started around 9.50pm on Wednesday night.
According to the longhouse folk, they tried to use fire extinguishers but all of them malfunctioned.
The 38-year-old wooden longhouse was apparently razed to the ground within minutes.
It is understood that due to communications problems, the longhouse folk only managed to contact the Marudi Fire and Rescue Department around 11.50pm.
Firefighters then faced difficulties getting to the longhouse as they needed to use a ferry and travel on timber tracks.
They would only reach the longhouse six hours later.
The longhouse, which comes under the Telang Usan state constituency and Baram parliamentary area, was home to some 100 residents.
However, many of the residents work in Miri or elsewhere.