Construction worker finds suspected WW2 bomb in Geylang, police cordon off street for safety

Singapore — On July 23, Tuesday, a construction worker found what could possibly be a bomb from World War 2 at a street near Aljunied MRT station.

The worker found the object in the grounds of a half-constructed building in Lorong 23 at around 9:15 am. The police came on to the scene shortly afterward and then closed off the whole street by 12:15 pm. Passersby report seeing seven police cars in the area.

An hour later, the cordoned-off part had been limited to only the construction site.

Officers from the Singapore Armed Forces’ Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team had been called in as well and seemed to have finished their duties at the site by 1:30 pm.

Mr Subari, the safety officer of the construction site, Trust Build Engineering & Construction, told the Straits Times (ST) that the 30 cm-long object was not a live bomb, according to the EOD team.

The construction company called in a third-party specialist, Explomo Technical Services Pte Ltd, which is certified by the Defence Ministry, to deal with the object. This was accomplished by 6:30 that evening, while construction was suspended for the rest of the day.

The ST reports that this is not the first time that a bomb from WW2 was found in the area, because in 2012 another one was found at the junction of Lorong 22 and Guillemard Road, between a drain and a four-storey building no longer in use.

One construction worker, Li Shi Wei, told The New Paper (TNP) that around 40 construction workers were evacuated from the premises, where an 8-storey building intended for light industrial work is being built. This building, called D’Innova, is scheduled for completion within the year.

Mr Li said, “The workers were digging for a pipe and did not realise what it was at first. They tried lifting it and said it was about 10kg before calling the safety officer who then called the police.”

People who had witnessed the incident also told stories of having to be evacuated. Driver Roslan Abdul Ghani also told TNP that he and his co-workers were told by the police to evacuate by 11:30 am.

“The officer said there was a bomb found at the construction site and told me to get my 20 or so colleagues to evacuate. It took less than five minutes, and some colleagues didn’t even ask me what was going on. They were just happy to leave the office. Some of them decided to go home.”

In the same way, Alan Loon, who works at Hong Soon Hardware across D’Innova’s building site, said that the personnel of the hardware was asked to leave at 10:45 am. “We saw the construction workers running out and were told to evacuate also, but we didn’t run out like them,” he told TNP. ”Some of us are so old already, so we don’t really have anything to fear.”/ TISG

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