SINGAPORE: The National Environment Agency (NEA) says a tropical storm is
the reason for the strong winds which blew into Singapore Wednesday night.
A
wind speed of up to 83 kilometres per hour was recorded — the strongest in
nearly nine years.
Among the damage caused — fallen trees and a broken
construction crane.
Residents of private condominium Abelia woke up to find
their Ardmore Park neighbourhood, near Shangri La Hotel, behind police
lines.
A construction crane at a neighbouring building had snapped into two,
with most of it dangling precariously from the 30th floor.
Police say a
lifting kit connected to the crane was found along the road. No one was
injured.
But the Manpower Ministry has stopped work at the site while it
figures out how to safely recover the crane.
It is investigating the
incident, which has also attracted the attention of other builders
nearby.
Tan Heok Ngee Benjamin, Project Manager, C@nspecs Pte Ltd, said:
"This crane is commonly used in a lot of construction sites. So if some problem
happens here, we want to see if there is anything we can do to prevent this from
happening."
Officials from the building company involved, Poh Lian
Construction, were tight—lipped about the incident.
Like many others across
the island, residents in the neighbourhood say they experienced unusually strong
winds last night.
The winds also wreaked havoc elsewhere across Singapore
last night.
The NEA says the strong winds were caused by a Sumatra squall,
named as such because the storm usually develops overnight in Sumatra and the
Straits of Malacca, before sweeping into Singapore between midnight and
daybreak.
NEA says such storms usually occur between April and
September.
For the rest of the month, we can expect another one or two
Sumatra squalls, but they are unlikely to be as severe as the one on Wednesday
night.