SINGAPORE: A faulty dry rising main forced firefighters battling a blaze on the 10th and 11th storeys of a Toa Payoh block to manually run hoses up the staircase to establish a water supply.
The incident occurred on Tuesday (Jul 29) at about 1.10pm at Block 229 Lorong 8 Toa Payoh.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said that during the onset of the firefighting operation, firefighters discovered that the block’s dry rising main was not in “proper working condition”, and water could not be “charged up” to the affected floors.
A dry rising main is a vertical red pipe installed in a building. During a fire, it will be charged with water from a fire engine to facilitate firefighting operations on higher floors.
Firefighters instead set up hoses directly from the fire engine at the ground level to establish a water supply to the 10th and 11th floors via the staircase.
“This is more onerous, but it is a contingency that SCDF firefighters regularly train for during their routine drills,” said an SCDF spokesperson.
The blaze was eventually put out at about 3.30pm.
