What was thought to have been an explosion heard by residents along the Sengkang Light Rail Transit (LRT) system on the night of 10th February, turned out to be a power outage as understood by The Straits Times (ST). ST understands that no one was hurt in the outage. One of the passengers on the train, who gave her name only as Mrs. Lim, told ST on Friday night that the train was quite empty, with fewer than 10 people.
She was with her husband and two children on the train, from Kangkar LRT station towards Bakau LRT station. About halfway through, it started bumping violently, she said. "There were a lot of sparks. The air-conditioning went off and some of the lights as well," said the 40-year old, who works in education. They tried contacting SBS Transit staff through the intercom, but communications were breaking up on the system, she said. Her husband and another man in the train opened the emergency door and the commuters self-evacuated.
Eyewitness Haziq Rahmat Ali, a 20-year old student, told ST on Friday that he was in his room at 8:10pm when there was 'a huge flash of light', followed by a loud boom. "I thought it was lightning," said Mr. Haziq, who lives at Block 123B, Rivervale Drive, adding that the Singapore Civil Defence Force and the police arrived soon after. According to Mr. Haziq, an LRT train was stuck and commuters had to evacuate on foot. SBS Transit said in a tweet at 9:10pm that there was no service on the Sengkang LRT East Loop due to a power fault. Commuters had heard a loud sound near the Bakau station around 8:00pm, media reports had earlier said, with some mistaking it for an explosion.
