I felt nothing but adrenaline: SCDF firefighter on Tuas blaze
Portrait of several responders who fought the waste management plant fire at Tuas View Circuit on 23 Feb. Back row, L-R: SGT Muhammad Farhan Bin Kutubundeen, 27, Fire Station Operationally Ready National Serviceman, MAJ Huang Weikang, 33, Commander Tuas View Fire Station, SSG Salman Bin Adam, 34, HazMat Specialist, CPT Shawn Tan, 28, Rota Commander. Front row, L-R: CPL Tan Zhi Wei, 23, Fire Station Operationally Ready National Serviceman, SGT Syazrul Hakim Bin Zulkifli, 23, Fire and Rescue Specialist, Full-time National Serviceman, LCP Wong Weiyang, 22, firefighter, Full-time National Serviceman. Photo: Nuria Ling/TODAY
SINGAPORE — When they arrived at the waste management plant just past six in the morning, the firefighters from Tuas View Fire Station thought that the fire was contained within the building and seemed manageable.
But within five minutes, it suddenly became an inferno that spread underground through the network of drains on the premises.
That was when they realised this was no ordinary day at work.
The first-response team of 16 firefighters, led by Captain Shawn Tan, was almost at the end of its shift at 8am, but it ended up staying way past 10am to put out the fire that broke out last Thursday (Feb 23) at the Eco Special Waste Management facility located at 23 Tuas View Circuit.
In the end, about 200 personnel took four hours to extinguish the blaze.
Recounting the experience, Cpt Tan, 28, who joined the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) less than two years ago, said that one of her first tasks was to assess the situation.
When her team was exiting the station towards the fire, they could already see thick plumes of black smoke.
Once at the scene, they swung into action “like clockwork”. When the fire spread wildly, she decided to call for reinforcements, including calling on her Fire Station Commander, Major Huang Weikang, 33. She also had to pull her teammates back from harm’s way, reassessing and restrategising the firefighting operation.
“My men are also my concern, because sometimes they are so focused on the task (at hand) that they cannot see what is going on around them,” she added.
Cpt Tan is one of 11 female Rota (rotation) commanders in the SCDF, out of 72 such commanders in fire stations across the island.
Speaking to the media on Monday (Feb 27), she said: “There was a lot going on, so at that point, there was nothing much that I felt, except for adrenaline.”
Joining them later were five operationally ready national servicemen, deployed at around 9am, an hour after they reported for their shift.
Two of them, Sergeant Muhd Farhan Kutubundeen and Corporal Tan Zhi Wei, were only in their first week of in-camp training and it was the first fire they had to fight during their cycles of training.
On what he learnt from this incident, Sergeant Syazrul Hakim, 23, a full-time national serviceman who had been with the station for seven months, said that it gave him more confidence in firefighting.
“It’s an accomplishment that I am proud to have contributed to significantly,” he told TODAY.
For those involved in the firefighting efforts, last Thursday’s blaze was their biggest one yet. It also gave their loved ones cause for worry.
Cpt Tan, for example, did not admit to her husband at first that she was at the scene of the fire when he asked. Later on, she simply told him: “I am busy now, I’ll call you back later.”
Maj Huang said: “You have no idea how many missed calls I had (from my wife).”
This was the first time Cpt Tan led her team to fight a major fire at an industrial site since joining the SCDF — the last major fire for her was one on a cargo barge last August. She was previously a regular in the Singapore Armed Forces for six years.
On why she wanted to be a firefighter, she said that she had always been interested in life-saving work, having been in the St John’s Ambulance Brigade in secondary school, and the lifeguard team in polytechnic.
Her vocation was met with scepticism from her late father, but she had told him to “trust me on this”, because “I have a higher calling (in saving lives)”.
