Smoke in MRT train forces evacuation – & No Quarantine?
According to Asia One News:
A SOUTH-BOUND train carrying about 200 passengers was evacuated at Toa Payoh MRT Station on Thursday after smoke was seen in one of the carriages.
An SMRT spokesman said that smoke was detected coming from an air-conditioning unit at the rear of the train at about 1.25pm.
The train was removed from service and regular operations resumed in about seven minutes. No one was injured.
Polytechnic student Benjamin Chua, who was passing by the station at the basement, told AsiaOne: “There smoke smelled like pesticide for fumigation. Some people were running, some walking. The people on the escalators were quite orderly but it was chaotic at the staircases as people rushed up the stairs.
Read the full article with photos at Asia One News:
- I read this article with great horror as there are seriously lack of preparation of such magnitude!
Ok, this may be a false alarm and someone might had brought the anti-dengue smoking machine on board…maybe their vehicle failed ha ha but seriously this could be the beginning of a biological or chemical attack!
Do you know that the deadliest strain, Zaire ebola virus, inflicts a death rate of 80-90 per cent, followed by Sudan ebola virus, with a mortality of 50-55 per cent?
At 21 November 2008, a new strain of ebola virus had been discovered…
The pigs from Philippines had recently (11 December 2008) confirmed to contracted ebola virus and Singapore had halted import of 50,000 tonnes of pork meat from Philippines.
Ebola and the Marburg virus are the two main categories of so-called filovirus which causes hemorrhagic fever (VHF), a disease dubbed a ‘slate-wiper’ for its extreme lethality.
The early signs of VHF are usually a high temperature, exhaustion, dizziness, watery diarrhoea and muscle ache. These symptoms are often mistaken for other fevers, such as flu or yellow fever, because VHF is rare.
The crazy thing is according to Wikepeida that It is also significant that none of the strains of Ebola known to cause disease in humans have been found to be airborne—only the strain known as Ebola Reston (after the city of Reston, Virginia where it was first identified in Green Monkeys) is believed to be airborne.
The big question is whether the smoke “incident” is just a test of our emergency response to such attack.
If the smoke is really something infectious, will the authorities do the RIGHT thing to quarantine the people inside the MRT station just in case more people will be infected outside the MRT…or the WHOLE Singapore!?
If you had seen the movie “Outbreak” or the latest “Quarantine” you can almost guess how much points I gave to the authorities on the emergency response….maybe 2 out of 10.
2 points is for them to try not to panic the people and ask them to evacuate at the “orderly” fashion but they let out hundred of people who had potentially been infected with ultra deadly virus that can potentially cripple the WHOLE Singapore within weeks.
Where is our S.O.P. for Biological, Chemical or Nuclear response preparation goes to? Does our public transport have a section on this preparation…if any?
Solution:
- Fine the operator for not preparing enough in advance for such events.
- Create a DVD video on how to response to Biological, Chemical or Nuclear Emergency response actions for ALL including the public, operators of public transport and the media.
- SCDF should brief everyone at SMRT/ARMY/POLICE on how to prepare for such events
- There should be some kind of cover all space suit for the operators to wear in such events to help the people in such emergency.
- There should be a electronic detector for biological, chemical or nuclear installed that work together with the “smoke” detector.
- There should be a safe quarantine location near the MRT station so that the potential infected people can be properly processed for any kind of virus, chemical or nuclear symptoms.
