In the wee hours of this morning, rescuers rushed to Upper Changi Road East at the slip road into the Pan-Island Expressway (PIE), where an uncompleted highway structure had collapsed.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) was alerted to the incident at about 3:35am, and deployed about 60 officers and K9 search dogs to conduct a search and rescue operation. Ten injured workers were conveyed to Changi General Hospital by ambulance, while one worker was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
As of 6:45am, all the workers at the construction site have been accounted for.
In a statement, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) confirmed that a section of the viaduct structure between two piers collapsed at about 3:30am. Employees had been carrying out works to cast the decking for the new viaduct next to the slip road from Upper Changi Road East to PIE when the structure collapsed, spilling onto the slip road. Eleven workers were working on top of the structure when the accident occurred.
The deceased was a Chinese national as were three others, while seven of the injured workers are from Bangladesh.
Preliminary investigations indicate that the structures supporting the pre-cast beams had given way.
“LTA has also begun safety investigations into the cause of the accident in order to see if there are any lapses or gaps we would need to address urgently,” it wrote.
“In this regard, LTA has among others directed the professional engineers (qualified persons in design & supervision) who were responsible for the project to carry out detailed investigations into the design and construction quality of the affected structure.”
Works at all LTA road and rail constructions sites will observe a safety timeout today.
LTA officers have already been assigned to help the injured workers and their families.
This wouldn’t be the first time the construction company involved — Or Kim Peow (OKP) Contractors — faced a workplace fatality. Just this Tuesday, OKP and one of its supervisors were convicted and fined over safety lapses at a work site in September 2015 under the Yio Chu Kang Flyover, where a worker died after falling 6.4m when a platform gave way. Three others suffered fractures and contusions from the accident.
OKP was fined $250,000 for failing to ensure the platform the workers were on had been properly put up. Regarding the case, the Ministry of Manpower even noted that it was clear that OKP did “not take workplace safety seriously”.
