Tree Falls Across Tiong Bahru Road & Blocks Access, 1 Person Injured & Car Damaged

Tree Falls Across Tiong Bahru Road & Blocks Access, Queue Of Buses Seen

The past few days have seen heavy rain blanketing Singapore.

A natural occurrence that unfortunately results from such wet conditions is the falling of trees.

Amid the rain on Friday (3 Mar), a large tree fell across Tiong Bahru Road and blocked access to the entire thoroughfare.

It also injured one person and damaged a car.

Tree falls in Tiong Bahru & damages sheltered walkway

Photos posted on social media on Friday evening show that the tree that fell used to stand outside Block 7 Tiong Bahru Road.

However, it now lay across the entire road.

The tree was so tall that it even damaged the sheltered walkway directly across from it, causing the roof to cave in.

Its now-exposed roots were so long that they stood at least two storeys high after being uprooted.

11 bus services affected, bus stops skipped

As the tree blocked Tiong Bahru Road, the two-way thoroughfare, which has four lanes, was rendered impassable to traffic.

In a Facebook post that evening, SBS Transit said 11 services had been affected.

 

They warned passengers on these services that they would be subjected to “prolonged waiting times”, and sought their understanding and patience.

Photos posted online show a queue of buses waiting behind the fallen tree, unable to move farther.

As of 7.53pm, a total of 11 bus stops had to be skipped due to route diversions, the company said in a Twitter post.

1 person injured, car damaged

Worse still, one person was injured in the incident, reported Channel NewsAsia (CNA).

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) was alerted at about 5.35pm on Friday, CNA quoted them as saying.

SCDF officers conveyed one person to Singapore General Hospital (SGH).

Photos on social media also showed a damaged black Mercedes at the scene.

While its front seemed to have emerged relatively unscathed, the roof and trunk possibly bore most of the impact as they were badly squashed, with debris littered across the vehicle.

It’s uncertain whether the person injured was linked to the damaged car.

Workers started to clear tree within 1 hour

Other photos showed a lorry crane and workers at the scene trying to remove the fallen tree.

As the incident reportedly took place at 5.35pm and there was still light when the workers were there, they should’ve arrived quite soon after the tree fell.

In fact, a sawing sound was heard in some of the videos taken. This indicated that the workers had already started to cut through the tree to clear it.

The workers were actually there within an hour, as CNA reported that they were there at 6.30pm along with police vehicles and an ambulance.

At 10.01pm, SBS Transit said in a tweet that their diverted buses had resumed normal operations — likely meaning that the tree had been removed by then, some 4.5 hours later.

MS News wishes a speedy recovery to the person injured as a result of the fallen tree.

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Featured image adapted from Kenneth Seet on Facebook and Charming Lee on Facebook.