Dunearn Road Submerged
16 June 2011
To: Moulmein MP Lui Tuck Yew
cc: MEWR minister Vivian Bala
cc: PM Lee
cc: REACH
The attached blog article, "The Flood: Did PUB pulled wool over the eyes of ST commentary writer about Cuscaden Rd?" makes some interesting observation, supported by elevation data from Google Earth.
The logic behind the argument is simple: If previously flood-prone Orchard Road is raised, the flood water must flow onto somewhere else in the surrounding areas with lower elevation.
One area is of course the Tanglin area (St Regis & Tanglin Mall) with lower elevation than the re-elevated Orchard Road, hence the recently flooded basements of these 2 buildings.
The other area is potentially the Dunearn Road/Bukit Timah Road off Scotts Road/Stevens Road under your care (also recently flooded - see attached photo above).
As residents of Dunearn Road, we expect you, as our MP, to proactively take action to ensure our interests as residents of your constituency are protected.
To summarise, "Orchard Road's gain is somewhere else's (in this case, Tanglin and Dunearn areas) pain".
In the overall scheme of things, solving flood-prone Orchard Road's problem (in protecting the tourism industry, the businesses there, Singapore's image, etc) may take precedence over everything else (the residents' homes and assets), but as our MP, we look to you to champion our concerns to ensure that Orchard Road's problems do not become our problems.
At the end of the day, the government must solve the flooding problem holistically and not do it band-aid style, patching here-and-there.
Are you up to it?
Rgds
Jeff
P.s. By the way, I have not received any replies to the various emails I sent you the last couple of weeks. I wonder if the government is serious about the people's feedback.
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http://thetwophilo.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/the-flood-did-pub-pulled-wool-over-the-eyes-of-st-commentary-writer-about-cuscaden-rd/
The Flood: Did PUB pulled wool over the eyes of ST commentary writer about Cuscaden Rd?
In her commentary piece of 13 Jun 2011, headed, “ Plumb depths of floods for good solutions”, Tan Dawn Wei quoted the PUB as having told her that (quote) “ Cuscaden also sits on a higher plane, so water should be flowing down to Orchard Road instead, it added.” (end quote).
That got me rather curious since I have been ‘groping’ and poking around with the help of Google Earth because of the recent spates of floods be-devilling our drainage system.
So, with my trusty GE (i.e., Google Earth) I zeroed in on two of the latest sites that have been quite sensationally and badly ‘flashed’, namely,
The St Regis Residences (SRR) which went ‘international’ when a UK newspaper featured a report of the flood, complete with photos, in which it was highlighted that some European-made (and expensive) cars, among them, an Aston Martin, Ferrari and Lamborghihi, got into the swim of things, so to speak, in the basement car park of one of the world’s apparently most expensive service apartments. Hardly, the sort of publicity that the SRR would need. The cars were pictured sitting in half-wheel height of flood water. A Youtube clip described rather extravagantly that the cars were “submerged in torrential flood waters”.
At Tanglin Mall, a stone’s throw away, shoppers and shop workers alike, received a fortuitous drenching from an equally impromptu ‘flash’ mini-waterfall. An ‘indoor rain’, said a description for a Youtube clip.
Back to my purpose.
This is what I found with Google Earth. (Refer to pic.) – that the elevation profile of Orchard Road at the junction of Orchard Road/Cuscaden Road is actually slightly HIGHER at between 31-32 m elevation compared to a 30 m elevation of the first 60 metres stretch of Cuscaden Road. After this short entry stretch, this road actually dips DOWNWORD towards the St. Regis Residences! (Orchard Road should now be even higher since the PUB took action to lift it up after the flash floods made their first appearance about a year ago.)
Pic 1. Orchard Road end of Cuscaden Road. Click on picture to enlarge it.From this lowest point, Cuscaden Road begins to move upwards going towards the Trader’s Hotel. There is therefore a height difference of some 13 metres between Orchard Road (at 31-32 m above sea level) and the stretch of Cuscaden Road fronting the SRR (at 18 m above sea level)! This is absolutely the opposite of the picture conveyed by the PUB to the ST writer.
Pic 2. The St Regis Residences is built on a plot that is at the lowest part of Cuscaden Road- at 18 metres above sea level it is some 13 metres below the Orchard Road level (at 31-32 metres above sea level). Click on picture to enlarge it.In fact, given the measurements revealed through Google Earth*, it would appear that during the recent downpour there would have been a likelihood that runoffs from both the Orchard Rd side and the Trader’s Hotel side of Cuscaden Road, as well as the surrounding bowl-shaped higher ground, would have flowed down towards the ST Regis Residence to flood its basement car park where those expensive cars were parked! Refer to Pic below.
The bowl shape terrain that the St Regis Residences is situated in. Click on picture to enlarge it.The question is, why this misinformation by the PUB?
NB. Tanglin Mall would be discussed in a subsequent blog.
