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SINGAPORE: A video purportedly offering an up-close look at a blast at a Tuas waste management plant was widely shared on WhatsApp and social media on Thursday (Feb 23).
But sharp-eyed netizens were quick to debunk the video as “fake”.
The same footage has previously been posted on YouTube in 2015 and 2016. At least two copies of the video described the incident as a gas plant explosion in China, and one stated it took place in Zhejiang.
The video has also been uploaded several times on YouTube and described as footage of a blast in Dombivali, India.
It was also passed off as an explosion at the Flamanville nuclear plant in France on Feb 9 this year, according to Franceinfo TV.
The Tuas fire took 200 firefighters four hours to put out. An eyewitness shared video of the fire with Channel NewsAsia, saying that the blaze was “so big, like a volcano” and that he felt tremors after the explosions.
SINGAPORE – The Sungei Road flea market’s last day of operation is on July 10 but the hawkers are hoping to be given an alternative or temporary site that will allow them to continue their business.
Yesterday, Mr Koh Ah Koon, 76, the president of the Association for the Recycling of Second Hand Goods, unfurled a banner at Sungei Road calling for the site to be conserved.
Speaking to The Straits Times later, Mr Koh said he was saddened but hopes an alternative site can be allocated for the hawkers.
“We don’t need a permanent location and can move. We hope the government can give us a temporary site so that our lifestyle and this aspect of local heritage can be retained.”
He said he has printed 10 banners and plans to collect signatures till July to support calls for the site to be “conserved” or retained. By 7pm on Feb 23, he had collected about 200 signatures.
The Government said the free hawking zone has to make way for future residential developments in a multi-agency statement last Tuesday.
Mr Koh’s association, which represents about 70 of 200 vendors at the flea market, had previously proposed four alternative sites – next to Rochor River, at Kampong Bugis along Kallang River, behind Sim Lim Tower and a roadside near Jalan Kubor Malay cemetery.
But the authorities said the four sites had been zoned for parks and residential use under Master Plan 2014.
After the Government announcement, the association submitted a fresh appeal to extend the deadline until the end of the year. If that fails, it hopes to secure a temporary site in Jalan Besar behind a hawker centre.
The Association for the Recycling of Second Hand Goods was established in 2012 after the Sungei Road Free Hawking Zone was reduced in size the previous year to make way for the construction of Sungei Road MRT station.
Mr Kalay V., 45, a businessman who signed the petition said: “This provides the elderly hawkers a legitimate source of income and can be seen as an engagement programme for seniors – not that different from those run by community centres.”
This article was first published on Feb 23, 2017.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.
SINGAPORE: Security officer Subramaniam Krishnan did not expect to witness a fire the size of a “volcano” when he got to work on Thursday morning (Feb 23).
Mr Subramaniam, who works at a factory close to the scene of the fire at a waste management plant, said he was having coffee when he heard two loud sounds. At first, he did not think anything was unusual as he often hears similar sounds from the stacking of containers at a yard next door.
It was the third explosion that caught his attention.
“The third sound was quite different from the first. It’s like a bomb sound,” he told Channel NewsAsia. “I could feel tremors.”
Mr Subramaniam then received a call from one of his security officers, who asked if he heard the sounds as well.
“We rushed to the fourth floor, the rooftop. I saw it was a big fire … Then I did a quick video recording,” Mr Subramaniam recounted. “My officers, they quickly evacuated our cleaners. Some of the staff who arrived in the morning, we got them out.”
About nine people were evacuated from Mr Subramaniam’s workplace between 6.30 and 6.45am, he said.
The security officer said he “quietly panicked” when he saw the size of the fire from the rooftop of his workplace. “Suddenly, at the canal, there was a big sound. A loud bang. Suddenly the fire caught up, I don’t know where the fire came from, suddenly I could see the fire, so big like a volcano,” he said. “That made me a bit panicked. So I quickly rushed down to the ground floor.”
Channel NewsAsia understands that the fire had spread to nearby areas through canals.
Mr Subramaniam said he saw the fire rage through this canal. (Photo: Lee Li Ying)
Mr Subramaniam said he could “feel the heat” of the blaze when recording a video of the incident, and that there was a toxic smell.
“The fire was burning all the way. Very scary. The trees (were) confirmed burnt, the grass (was) all burnt,” he said, adding that he also saw smoke emitting from manholes in the area.
Trees planted next to the canal were burnt as a result. (Photo: Lee Li Ying)
“This is a kind of fire I have never seen,” the security officer said. “A few things (have) happened in the Tuas area, this is the biggest as (far as) I know – very scary.”
It took 200 firefighters from the Singapore Civil Defence Force four hours to extinguish the blaze. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
SINGAPORE – Mr Chai Tong Seng shouted himself hoarse for more than six hours on Wednesday (Feb 22).
The 67-year-old man had bellowed for help after his right hand was trapped in a water pipe, Lianhe Wanbao reported.
He had wanted to clean out the water pipe around noon, as it had not been washed thoroughly in two years. Unfortunately, he overestimated the girth of the pipe and was unable to retrieve his hand.
The Chinese daily reported that Mr Chai had endured 30 minutes of pulling before deciding to shout for help.
He was alone at his Hougang Road home at that time, as his wife had left for work.
It was only at around 7 pm when neighbours finally heard Mr Chai’s cries for help.
Read also:
Man’s hand stuck in toilet drainage trap for 9 hours
Man, 82, has arm stuck in toilet drain for 12 hours
A woman who lives on the same floor as Mr Chai had left the house to buy dinner for her family when she heard faint groaning sounds. She was surprised to hear the same noise when she returned home.
After alerting her father, the pair peered into Mr Chai’s home and discovered that he was in distress.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) arrived at his home on the seventh floor shortly after and spent more than three hours attempting to free Mr Chai’s arm.
Officers had to request entry to a sixth-floor unit to cut off the conjoining water pipe with an electric drill.
Mr Chai was finally freed at around 10.40pm.
When Lianhe Wanbao visited Mr Chai at the hospital, reporters observed that the man’s right arm was bandaged, while his shoulder was red.
Mr Chai explained that he had manually cleaned out his water pipe for the past 20 years without any incident.
He added that he suffered from high blood cholesterol and felt dizzy during the ordeal.
A video of an explosion that allegedly which happened during a fire at a Tuas waste management plant on Thursday (Feb 23) has been revealed to be circulating online since at least 2015.
The video has been shared by many on social media users who captioned that it happened during the blaze in Tuas.
But other eagle-eyed netizens realised that the location shown in the video does not look like Tuas.
The huge fire that broke out at ECO Special Waste Management at 6am today was put out after four hours.
Explosion-like sounds were heard as firefighters battled the blaze at 23 Tuas View Circuit.
But these were not the enormous blasts shown in the video now being circulated online and on WhatsApp.
A longer version of the same video was posted on YouTube by a user known as Ahmed Treiban in November 2015, titled “Chinese gas plant explosion”.
But other YouTube users commented that the video looked more like a controlled explosion.
One user known as Antero Vipunen said that it was a film set, and highlighted that a camera crane can be seen near the explosion.
Visit STOMP for more stories.
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SINGAPORE — Sengkang residents are getting a new bus interchange at Compassvale come March 12.
With the interchange comes a new bus service, 374, which will ply a route connecting commuters from Sengkang West to key amenities such as the Sengkang Integrated Transport Hub, Compass One shopping mall and the future Sengkang General Hospital.
(Illustration: LTA)
Future bus services departing from the interchange will be added to cater for further developments in Sengkang down the line, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said in a statement on Thursday (Feb 23).
In addition to the new bus service, LTA said the interchange was designed to be as inclusive as possible.
There will be dedicated boarding points with graduated kerb edges at each bus queue to enable wheelchair bound passengers to board buses easier.
In addition, the interchange will have priority queues for the elderly and disabled, standalone nursing rooms with diaper changing amenities and a wash basin, and 40 bicycle racks.
Services operating from the existing Sengkang Bus Interchange will not be affected.
South Korea is using giant loudspeakers to blast news of the dramatic assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s half-brother across the border with its reclusive northern neighbour, it was reported Thursday (Feb 23).
Kim Jong Nam – the eldest son of the North’s late leader Kim Jong Il – died on Feb 13 after being attacked by two women at a Kuala Lumpur airport in what is suspected to be a murder planned by Pyongyang.
The North’s state media remained quiet on the killing until it released a scathing denouncement of the Malaysian investigation Thursday, without identifying Kim Jong Nam as the victim.
But the South this week employed its banks of high-decibel loudspeakers to ensure details of the death of Jong Nam, once believed to be the likely heir, reverberated through wide swathes of the border area, Seoul’s MBC TV station said.”Kim Jong Nam… died after being attacked by two unidentified women at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia,” blared the message from the speakers and replayed by the TV station.
“Malaysian authorities said four suspects are North Korean nationals including one who has been arrested,” it said.
News of the outside world is heavily restricted and censored in the North under the Kim family, which has ruled for decades with an iron fist and pervasive personality cult.
The South Korean military has for years blasted a mix of world news, propaganda messages and K-pop songs across the border using dozens of loudspeakers, which targets soldiers in the isolated state. They have a range of around 10 kilometres.
Seoul’s defence ministry refused to confirm the reports over the latest broadcast, citing national security concerns.
North Korean state media Thursday broke its 10-day silence on the murder, launching a ferocious assault on Malaysia for its “immoral” handling of the case and for playing politics with the corpse.
The propaganda broadcasts are intensely hated by Pyongyang which at one point threatened to shell the loudspeakers.
The North is also known to have installed a number of loudspeakers near the border to carry out its own propaganda broadcasting in a bid to drown out the sound from the South.
Kim was at one time set to take the reins of power in the isolated North; groomed by his father for a third generation succession.
But he fell out of favour and lived in exile in China as his younger brother was groomed to take power following the death of their father in 2011.
Considering a big move?
Well, you might be in luck, as the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology is currently searching for an English teacher.
The private North Korean university is looking for “an energetic, responsible and well-qualified professional teacher with relevant English teaching experience” according to the job offer posted on Hey Success, a British requirement website.
Applicants must also have a Master’s degree in any subject, as well as “at least one year’s classroom English teaching experience at the high school, college or university level.”
English teaching qualifications like TEFL/ CELTA/ TESOL are also preferred.
Interestingly, most of the eligible candidates’ origin countries are non-English speaking ones like Argentina, China and Cambodia.
The university is also looking specifically for someone with a “long-term” mindset who will be willing to stay in North Korea for several years, and who will be able to “commit to an entire 15-week semester.”
The offer does not mention benefits or salary, but previous English teachers in the “hermit country” have had to pay a US$1,000 (S$1414) fee that “covers a return air ticket from Beijing to Pyongyang,” as well as “a North Korean visa, weekend excursions around the country, all meals and three-star hotel accommodation,” as reported by Sputnik News.
The listing reminds applicants that “due to the nature of the work and campus-based lifestyle, candidates should also be willing to work as part of a team, submit to authority, and exercise flexibility, cross-cultural sensitivity and perseverance.”
