Corporal (Cpl) Aaron Zhang
was performing his usual duties as a patrol officer, controlling
traffic together with his partner Staff Sergeant (SS)
Irwan Bin Ariffin. Among other responsibilities, they
had to push broken-down vehicles to safe areas to be towed
away.
On any other day, two Traffic Police (TP)
officers pushing stalled vehicles wouldn’t
have made many heads turn. But it wasn’t
just any other day — it was the 19th of
December, when rainfall was at its highest in
75 years, and the two partners were wading
waist-deep in floodwaters.
The northeast monsoon brought with it 366
millimetres of rain that day alone, exceeding
the average monthly rainfall of December
in previous years. But a ray of light shone
amidst the clouds as many government
agencies joined hands to manage the
situation quickly and efficiently.
The previous evening, the Meteorological
Services Division and PUB, the national water
agency, had sent out warnings of heavy rain
and the possibility of flash floods. Flood
advisories were distributed to residents in
low-lying areas while the public was alerted
through radio announcements. However, as
it continued to pour throughout the night
and into the next day, agencies moved
quickly to minimise the inconvenience
caused to the public.
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| A short respite from clearing up
the flooded nurseries. |
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| Photo courtesy of www.asiaone.com |
On the afternoon of the 19th, Cpl Zhang
and SS Irwan were at the intersection of
Joan Road and Upper Thomson Road, where
the floodwaters had already caused a few
engine failures. The officers had to prevent
other vehicles from entering the inundated
area, and make sure that pedestrians stood
at a safe distance.
“This type of situation doesn’t happen often
in Singapore,” said Cpl Zhang. “It [the water]
made movement slightly more difficult, and
there were a lot of vehicle breakdowns. We
needed assistance.”
Assistance came in the form of PUB field
officers and Land Transport Authority (LTA)
officers, who helped to direct traffic. The
LTA officers also put up barricades to divert
traffic from affected roads.
The government agencies were not the only
ones involved in managing the floods. A
group of more than 10 foreign workers, who
had seen Cpl Zhang and SS Irwan pushing
cars and public buses, went forward to help.
Cpl Zhang reflected on the importance of everyone’s efforts
in working as a team to weather the elements: “Things
that a police officer can do are quite limited… It [Inter-agency
and citizen cooperation] actually made the whole process
faster and more effective.”
In the TP Operations Room, officers were
dealing with the floods at a strategic level.
Among them was Senior Station Inspector
(SSI) Wong Chung Kent. Under normal
weather conditions, SSI Wong’s duties as an
operations officer include managing traffic
island-wide, and dispatching officers to
accident sites when calls come in from the
public.
But on that exceptionally rainy day, SSI Wong
had to deploy officers on a massive scale:
Joan Road and Upper Thomson Road were
not the only areas that were flooded — the
rains had beaten down hard on other places
like Admiralty Road too.
SSI Wong had to coordinate the efforts of other agencies
to supplement TP’s manpower. He requested LTA’s assistance
to monitor the roads using their cameras to supplement
TP’s own junction cameras, which did not provide full
coverage of the area.
Officers in the operations room scrutinised
traffic “almost minute-by-minute”, said SSI
Wong, as they had to provide motorists with
real-time traffic updates as far as possible.
This information was also used by the TP
operators to guide LTA’s contractors in
positioning the barricades on the roads.
Elsewhere, PUB staff was stationed at various
reservoirs and flood-prone areas throughout
Singapore to monitor the situation so that
regular updates could be provided to the
public. That night, PUB contractors worked to
clear debris that had been washed down by
the rain. Some 1,500 kilogrammes of debris,
including fallen foliage, litter and even a
refrigerator, were eventually removed from
the drains.
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| Among those affected by the floods were the nurseries at Thomson Road that suffered estimated damages of up to $1 million. |
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| Photo courtesy of www.asiaone.com |
Back at Thomson, PUB immediately started
widening sections of existing earth drains
after the floods subsided to improve the
flow of water. In the long run, these earth
drains will be replaced by a concrete canal
with a larger capacity.
PUB also met up with the Thomson nursery
operators who had been affected by the
floods to see what could be done to help
them. Mr Yap Kheng Guan, Drainage Director
of the PUB, was present at the meeting.
Together, they came up with a flood warning
system to alert the nursery owners in case of
recurring incidents.
On the 22nd of December, PUB installed a
water-level sensor in a canal at Joan Road
which would detect breaches in safe water
levels. An SMS alert would then be sent to a
PUB officer, who would in turn forewarn the
shop owners. Besides this, officers were on
duty round the clock to check on water levels.
Mr Yap said: “We told them [the nursery
operators] that there are many ways we can
work together to see how we can be better
prepared the next time, and we have all their
contact numbers so that we can call them
almost immediately should we see the water
level rising. They appreciated it very much.”
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No one agency can do all these things alone. Making sure that a place is
rendered flood-free requires solutions that cut across a few agencies.
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Mr Yap Kheng Guan
Drainage Director of the PUB
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Since then, the PUB and the nursery
operators have been conscientiously taking
the necessary precautions to avoid repeated
instances of flooding. January may have
come with continued showers, but it also
came with a greater sense of preparedness.
On the 11th of January, when almost 43% of
the average amount of rainfall for the entire
month had fallen, the PUB alerted the eight
nurseries as soon as the electronic sensors
sounded an alert.
On their own initiative, nursery operators
put up sandbag walls every night to guard
against heavy rains. One of the nurseries,
Goodwood Florist, went even further,
building a metre-high wall at the back of
the nursery where floodwaters usually
channel in.
A stormy December had steeled everyone
for the vagaries of the weather. Among
agencies, working relations improved and
this was carried forward to January, when
cooperation was called for once again to
cope with minor floods.
To surmount the 19th single-handedly would
have hardly been possible for any agency
to accomplish on its own. Mr Yap pointed
out: “No one agency can do all these things
alone. Making sure that a place is rendered
flood-free requires solutions that cut across
a few agencies.”
And his words ring true. In fulfilling their
specialised roles and cooperating with one
another at the same time, agencies covered
a wider scope of tasks in a shorter time.
Restoring the calm would certainly have
had been much more arduous without this
united effort displayed by the agencies. |
