Freak Flash Flood

When does a Freak become a Fault?

When an unsually catastrophic event happens, we have a tendency to call it a Freak event. Isolated incident.

What we really mean, when we label something a Freak is that
- It’s not our fault; this was totally unpredictable, uncontrollable
- It won’t happen again, or the frequency which it will happen is not worth the cost of fixing the system : the system is still fine
- So we don’t have to do anything

Which is dangerous. Because sometimes, the Freak is mislabelled.  The unsually catastrophic event happened because something just got broken. Something became a Fault. A Fault in the system. It may or may not be a Fault of the man-made system — it could be a Fault in nature…. a fundamental change in the environmental conditions for example. The first catastrophic event is the first symptom of the Fault.  When it’s a Fault, we can be assured, it WILL happen again.

.

Some Freaks that turned out to be Faults

- The once-in-50-yrs flooding :
100mm in 1hour rains WILL happen again. More than once in 50yrs.
Hasn’t the message hit home that the climate has fundamentally changed? Climate changes can’t be managed by just recycling plastic bags and using energy-saving bulbs alone. Drainage systems need overhaul yes?

- Epidemics:
SARS was a Freak? Nope, H1N1 proved it’s a Fault.
Migration patterns & travel modes have fundamentally shifted in the world, and that will not change in the foreseable future. The nature of epidemics change accordingly.
Epidemics WILL be regular features in the years to come. And to think they’ll just be airborne respiratory epidemics is naive. HIV is a sexually transmitted epidemic. Watch out for more varieties of global epidemics to come — water, food supply (how many food MNCs are supplying our global food chains??) etc. Are we prepared?

-Earthquakes
In recent years the earthquakes in Sg seem to have gotten more frequent & more noticeable. Freak? Or Fault? Not our building fault maybe. The Earth’s fault maybe. Are we prepared?

- Financial crisis, terrorism, cultural clashes, etc
Lots of Freaky news. You KNOW they will happen. Again. and again.

.

Investigations & Reviews needed: PUB & Civil Defense?

So what’s the point?

We need to review our risk management. How prepared are we?

Not just at the national level, but at the personal level too.

I was very very surprised at how NONE of the press or blogs picked up at the very dangerous way people along Orchard Rd responded to flashfloods (or maybe I’ve missed such articles. Apologies if I have, please enlighten in the comments, thanks!). Many shop owners and staff in Lucky Plaza’s basement decided to shut their doors and set up barricades, hoping to keep the water out. Many shopowners and staff stayed in their shops.

They were very very lucky indeed, the floods remained so shallow, at knee-level. What if the flash flood had rose to above head level? WHat if the flash flood completely buried the basement? Flash floods happen within minutes, like fires. If you’re in a basement & you see water rushing down the stairs, RUN OUT! You could actually be buried & drowned in minutes.

In addition to PUB’s investigation, I would like to see more people calling on the Civil Defense to review the emergency response procedures the public needs to be aware of, in cases of flash floods. I would like to see the Civil Defense raising awareness on this issue. Because it WILL happen again.

.

Insurance

I was pleasantly surprised to see NTUC Income’s very quick response at reassuring its customers.

“You can be sure of one thing with us — Someone will pay for this”

I had expected our main news channels to do detailed reports on the various compensation options and insurance policies different companies had. Ah well, maybe tomorrow =)

.

.

PS. Been real busy lately, hence the infrequent updates. In fact, I didn’t even know about the floods until i finally checked my FB news feeds at midnight last night!

My sympathies to all the business owners. Think I’ll contribute by having my favourite Green Tea Cream at StarBucks later.

Advertisement