SINGAPORE: Water flowing from the tunnel ceiling in the Marina Coastal Expressway (MCE) was not from a burst pipe or seawater leakage, said the Land Transport Authority (LTA) in response to videos circulating on social media.
“At 7.10am today, the water-based fire-fighting system along a 25m stretch of the Marina Coastal Expressway (MCE) westbound tunnel, after the East Coast Parkway/Fort Road entry, was accidentally triggered due to a technical fault,” said the LTA in a statement on Tuesday (Mar 19).
“The system was switched off at about 7.26am. There is no fire and seawater seepage in the tunnel. There was some slow moving traffic near the affected areas of the tunnel during the incident, with no major impact to traffic.”
A video posted on several Facebook pages showed motorcyclists lining the side of the tunnel to put on their raincoats before going under the sprinklers.
A driver and passenger can be heard speculating on the origin of the water, and if it was a burst pipe or seawater leaking through the ceiling.
A screengrab from a video showing motorcyclists lining the side of the Marina Coastal Expressway tunnel to put on their raincoats on Mar 19, 2019.
Another video showed vehicles passing through a curtain of water after rows of sprinklers were activated.
In January, a section of the Marina Coastal Expressway (MCE) was closed for about two hours because of a burst pipe.
The fire-fighting system along the Marina Coastal Expressway (MCE) tunnel was accidentally activated in May 2017, causing a slowdown in traffic.
