While it made a bizarre sunset at Marina Bay, the blaze that engulfed a river taxi yesterday had a grim aftermath — the boatman has been missing since the incident.
After the fiery vessel itself was extinguished using water jets from the river bank, Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) have been conducting search operations for a reported missing person from the boat — the only apparent casualty of the fire.
An eyewitness who spoke to Channel NewsAsia yesterday had noted that he saw a person jump off the the river taxi after it caught fire. Other nearby vessels approached the flaming boat, but it’s unclear if they had picked him up from the waters. In this Channel NewsAsia clip, you can see the man leaping from the boat into the river at the 0:48 mark.
SCDF deployed their elite Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team (DART) to dive into the Singapore river to search for the missing man, but their efforts have so far been for naught.
The underwater search was called off around midnight, but “surface search” carried on. So far, no news of the SCDF being able to find him.
