It was not a crisis, or need not be

The North South Line breakdown was not meant to be a crisis. Some have called it the worst incident to have happened. Yes it was a major breakdown, but the worst is yet to come. How about two trains collided, trained jumps rail and smashes into the tunnel wall causing the wall to collapse, commuters injured and trapped, water flooding the tunnel with packed trains?

With the extensive network of trains running above and under the ground, breakdown is going to happen every now and then. It is unacceptable, but machines will have its wear and tear, there will be human errors in small little things like connecting a wrong wire or improper wiring, or power failure or something else.

What failed badly and turning a power failure into a fiasco is the poor execution of an emergency evacuation plan. Presumably there is a plan to evacuate the commuters in a situation like this, then the failure is leadership. Who is to decide that it is a crisis and the emergency plan be activated? Apparently everyone was trying to do something but evacuating the commuters was not in their minds.

And to make matter worst, the backup power supply did not come in or was found grossly inadequate. A 45 min UPS unit is really much less than that as events would have to unfold and by the time management decides that it is serious, at least half an hour would have elapsed. The 45 min window must be a critical factor for the emergency team to work on in a situation when the train is packed with people and life could be at stake.

And I think they discovered that the emergency ventilation was also grossly under provided given the complaints of difficulties in breaking. If normal people have difficulties, the sick, the young and old would be in deeper trouble. The ventilation must be good enough to keep a fully packed train at peak hours for at least a couple of hours safe before rescue arrived. If management consciously provided a 45 min backup system, the emergency plan must take that into account to start evacuating people much earlier before the backup system dies.

I am not going to suggest that train drivers be renamed train captains like pilots and be trained and proficient to handle an emergency like this. But they must be trained and tasked to take control of such situation to manage the commuters and take immediate safety precautions. Apparently they were sitting in their cabins waiting for instructions and leaving the frightened and worried passengers on their own.

When the lighting was out, when the passengers were having difficulties breathing, the most stupid thing was to tell the commuters that there was ventilation as the ventilation was either not working or inadequate and people were suffocating. People would not die just because the train is not moving. People will die if they cannot breath even inside the safety of a train.

The whole mess could be avoided if someone had decided to activate the evacuation procedure early and get the commuters out safely. The delay to act was the main factor that contributed to the crisis and endangered the safety and lives of the commuters. The power failure was just a power failure.

The event could be just an exciting experience like an emergency drill if handled correctly, efficiently and timely. And the commuters would just have a great story to tell, without fear of anything worst, except some inconvenience.

When emergency press button

Do you know what to do during an emergency in a train? All the sinkies reply yes. Last night when the trains broke down, all the sinkies were furiously pressing the buttons for help.

4,500 American and more than 100,000 Iraqi lives

These are the official number of dead people in the Iraq War. Not counting the hundreds of thousands of casualties, the destruction of the Iraq economy, the trillions of dollars spent and the murder of Saddam Hussein.
This is the price paid, by the Americans and the Iraqis for a hoax. Yes a hoax in which an American President and a British Prime Minister told the world and their people to believe.

And the Americans are happy that mission is accomplished. No one is mentioning the hoax and no war criminal charges against the two culprits who ordered and sanctioned the death of their own soldiers and the death of Iraqis, combatants and civilians.

And the Americans boys and girls are going home as heroes and heroines in a victorious war. How silly can things be?

Where is the white man’s conscience? Convening a war crime against the two perpetrators of this senseless killings and loss of lives is a must. But no, the white men will pretend it never happened. The silly Afro Asians and Arabs just did not know what to do or what to say. Yes, it happened. So what?

This is crime against humanity in the 21st Century!

Please do not punish the commuters

Train breakdowns are getting more frequent and fines are thrown at the operator quite often too. But please, take it easy, don’t fine them too much, in fact, please do not fine them. And please, do not call for heavy fines.

All fines will end up being reflected at the bottom line. And when the profit goes down, it will be good justification for more fare hike. Indirectly, the commuters will be the one paying the fines for the breakdown.

Please LTA, please do not fine the operator to fine the commuters. Psst, I heard someone giggling in the corner.

MDA reviewing book due to title error

I quote the mypaper, ‘The Media Development Authority said it is reviewing a series of satirical short stories, poems and essays about life in Singapore because of a discrepancy in titles and not because of its contents.’

This is uniquely Singapore. It reminds of the guy who told everyone to stay 100m away from a hut that had a bomb inside but people inside the hut is okay because inside the hut is not violating the order to stay 100m away.