(Source: Today paper)
William Lim, 15 an Indonesian student who was here on holiday was drowned after he fell into a non barricaded drain and was swept away. IMO, someone will have a higher chance of being drowned in Indonesia compared to Singapore during a flood because of the infrastructures, but it happened. PUB only started to install barricade AFTER a death had happened.......
HOWEVER, this is not the first case of drowning happening in a flash flood. PUB had only just awaken after sleeping since 2003 from a similar case in Boon Lay Drive Blk 191.
In 2003, a 3 years old toddler boy named Jiawei was swept away after his mother fallen into a "hidden" drain covered with rain water. His body was found in Jurong lake after a few days.....
Am I very critical of our stats boards over this incident? I do not think so because the case of the 15 years old Indonesian teen should not have happened again because a case had happened in 2003. Why it happened again?
Below is the new about the tragic drowning of the 3 years old toddler boy:
"No sign of toddler, so search is called off. Search party looked for 16 hours for boy, three, who vanished after he and mum stumbled into flooded drain after storm
By Dawn Wong
THE search for the boy who was swept away in a flooded drain at Boon Lay Drive was called off at 4 pm yesterday, after no body was found. A team of navy divers, along with the police, coast guard and 25 Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) officers had been brought in to look for Pan Jiawei, three.
In 16 hours, they covered all the connecting drains from Block 191 at Boon Lay Drive to the 80 ha Jurong Lake at the Chinese Garden, which is about 3 km away. This included more than 1 km of the Sungei Lanchar canal, which runs into the lake. At the canal's broadest point, six officers walked shoulder to shoulder in chest-high water. Every time they felt something with their feet on the debris-laden floor, they stopped to check.
Police spokesman Audrey Ang said divers searched the lake as well as its mouth, which leads to the sea. Lieutenant-Colonel N. Subhas, head of SCDF's public affairs department, said: 'The current inside the drain was very strong immediately after the downpour, and that could have caused the boy to be swept very far away.'
The boy, the youngest of four children, was clutched in the arms of his mother, housewife Lin Yuzhu, 28, when she accidentally stumbled into a 1 m-deep drain outside Block 191, at about 6.40 pm on Tuesday.
The mishap took place during a thunderstorm which caused the drain to overflow. Water covered the pavement and the road near it. Jiawei slipped out of her arms when she lost her balance. The last time she saw him, he was being carried away by the water. The mother of three boys and a girl was on her way to fetch one of her older sons from his school when the incident occurred.
Police said that though the search has ended officially, they will continue to look out for the boy.
Madam Lin refused to be interviewed at her Boon Lay Drive flat yesterday, but The Straits Times found out that when she fell into the drain, she panicked and struggled because she could not swim. After she was rescued by passers-by, they had to prevent her from jumping back in to look for Jiawei.
Shopkeepers at Block 188, near where it happened, said that the area near the drain always flooded badly whenever it rained. Madam Jaime Lim, 39, who works at a tailor shop, said: 'After it rains, people cannot see the drain.'"
(Source: sgforum.com)
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