Woman wanted to ‘give up’ as she hung upside down in Tanjong Katong sinkhole
Almost half a year after falling into a sinkhole along Tanjong Katong Road South, the female driver involved has come forward to tell her story.
43-year-old Ms Pearlyn Lim said in an interview with Christian portal Salt & Light that she thought of her daughter as she was hanging upside down in her car, causing her to gather her wits and escape.
Source: Salt & Light
Woman was driving home when she fell into Tanjong Katong sinkhole
On 26 July 2025, Ms Lim was driving home after sending her friends home.
At about 5.50pm, she stopped at a junction in Tanjong Katong when a migrant worker held up a “stop sign”.
When she drove off, she felt an “odd bounce” in the road and heard people shouting “stop, stop!”.
She slammed the brakes, but saw the road around her buckle and open up into a hole, reaching her car.
Her black Mazda then dropped into the hole, with her in it.
Source: SGRoad Blocks / Traffic News on Telegram
Woman thought of daughter as she sunk into hole
Ms Lim described the experience as “surreal”, making her wonder if she was dreaming.
Her car proceeded to sink into the hole until it landed upside-down about 3m below the surface.
During this time, she kept thinking of her 13-year-old daughter Anya, crying out:
Please, God, don’t leave my daughter alone in this world.
Source: SGRoad Blocks / Traffic News on Telegram
Woman tries to escape but finds both feet stuck
When Ms Lim found herself upside-down in her car, trapped in a dark hole, she turned on the torch in her phone to see what was happening.
Debris was still falling and water was pouring into her car through a crack in the windscreen, she said.
She knew she had to escape immediately, so she managed to open the car door and unbuckle her seat belt.
However, both her feet were stuck under a pedal and the seat, causing her to momentarily be “in shock”.
Woman felt like giving up, but thought of her daughter
For “a split second”, Ms Lim felt like giving up.
But she felt “overwhelming sadness” at not seeing her loved ones again, and “really, really missed” Anya, she said, adding:
I was very thankful that the last thing I’d said to her was, ‘I love you.’ And that I’d hugged her before I left the house.
Source: Salt & Light
Migrant worker helps woman climb out of sinkhole
Such thoughts may have led Ms Lim to snap out of it and find a way to escape.
She freed both her feet and got out of the car, then saw a lot of people screaming and trying to help her.
One of them, a migrant worker, shouted calmly for her to come out. He was lying down, leaning half his body into the sinkhole.
Making eye contact with her, he guided her up by advising her on how to climb through the debris towards him.
Finally, he reached his hand down and told her to jump, then grabbed onto her hand and pulled her up.
“I was incredibly thankful to him,” she said.
Videos on social media showed workers pulling Ms Lim out of the hole with their combined efforts.
Source: Thelocalsociety on Facebook
Mother & daughter reunited in the hospital
After being rescued, Ms Lim turned to look at her car and it had already sunk below the surface.
“Had I been in the sinkhole a few more minutes, I would have drowned,” she said. “And if there had been more than one car or more than one person in that sinkhole … I dread to think what could have happened.”
The first thing she did was to borrow a worker’s phone to call Anya.
When mother and daughter finally met in the hospital, Anya hugged her and handed her a note addressed to “Mama”, in which she penned her thoughts on the incident.
The girl wiped the dirt from her mother’s body, telling her that she was “famous” now. They then laughed and cried.
On the road to recovery
Ms Lim has been in therapy since the incident. She has also been taking medication such as anti-anxiety pills and anti-depressants.
She gets anxiety attacks when triggered by events related to the incident, for example a crack, thunder, being underground and being in the car.
But she says she has been able to cope by facing her fears and with support from friends and family, as well as her Christian faith.
Source: Salt & Light
She is now on the road to recovery, and returned to work at a French advertising agency last week.
Ms Lim told Salt & Light that she is not bitter about the incident — in fact, it gave her a much-needed break as she was having a “very hard time” in the few months before.
Thus, she thinks it could have been “God giving (her a) break”.
Thus, while she had declined all media interviews after the incident, she came forward now to give glory to God, she said.
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Featured image adapted from Salt & Light and SGRoad Blocks / Traffic News on Telegram.
