Singapore Flooding...

The day was 19 December 2006. It started raining at my work place from Monday noon onwards and since then the whole island did not see much sunshine til the following midnight...

Looking at the scenes reported by the journalist, it was unbelievable. Who would have thought that after so many years, Singapore still have the possibility of flood. Once again nature shows who is boss. Fortunately it was just material losses for the flood victim and no death reported.

According to the News, it was the third-largets rainfall in 75 years of Singapore recorded history on Tuesday.

One blogger created a video of still image. The video says it all:


News source: www.channelnewsasia.com

Damage caused by floods could run to millions: shopowners
By Valarie Tan, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : In Singapore, the sun finally came out on Wednesday morning after nearly two days of non-stop rain.

But it is too little too late for some shops located in low-lying areas.

They bore the brunt of Tuesday's massive floods, which had caused damage estimated to run to millions of dollars.

The Public Utilities Board (PUB) says flood and heavy rain alerts were sent out before the clouds turned grey.

The tide has passed, but there was nothing to cheer about.

Workers at some shops took stock of the damage, while others salvaged whatever they could.

About 100 holiday hampers were saved at one outlet.

Ryan Chioh, Owner, Goodwood Florist, said, "The priority, even from last night, has always been to save the customers' orders. After all we're a gift company. At the same time, (we will) call customers that are affected, as much as we can... This is the first time something like this has happened. The last two floods that we had, they were flash floods. They came and went very fast. So we were hoping for that to happen. But it never did."

And it looks like it will take a while, perhaps even up to months, for business to resume.

But the mood of its 30 workers has not been dampened.

They hope to put things back together and get business up and running again before Lunar New Year in 2007.

And water continues to flow from MacRitchie Reservoir but the rate has since slowed down as it had stopped raining.
PUB says about 1,500 kilogrammes of debris have been cleared from drains in Olive Road alone.

But could the damage have been minimised?

PUB sent out heavy rain alerts in early October to some 600 residents and shopowners in flood-prone areas like Geylang.

Other areas include Boat Quay, Chinatown, Jalan Besar, and Lorong Buangkok.

The notices advised people to, for example, put up sand bags and block the entry of water.

Other advice included placing items on a higher level.

But Goodwood Florist claims it did not get such notices.

Tuesday's heavy rain and floods also stalled trains travelling between Singapore and Malaysia.

At least five services were cancelled on Wednesday.

Trains affected include Ekspress Rakyat, travelling from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur; Ekspress Sinaran Pagi, from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore; and Mail Trains No. 58, 61 and 64.

Visitor numbers also dipped at Sentosa to only about 3,000 per day during the wet weather, down from the daily average of 10,000.

There is more wet weather to come over Singapore in the next few days.

Even though chances of prolonged rain are not high, the National Environment Agency is not totally ruling it out. - CNA/ms