Ubin Oil Spill - At Changi Beach

12:48 AM    

Part 2 - At Changi Beach
[ACRES Action Alert] Day 2: Rescue at oil spill site

The animals need your help and we are in urgent need of volunteers! If you would like to help, please meet us at the Changi Beach Park Carpark 6 (near the SAF Ferry Terminal) from 6am until 11am tomorrow (29 May).
  
Pulau Ubin
East, Singapore
May 2010

It was a bright sunny Saturday after the restful Vesak Day holiday in Singapore. Scheduled for a macro shoot with my photo kakis in Ubin, I was in Changi Beach. As the ferry terminal was unusually crowded with the holiday revellers, I decided to take a short walk along the beach.

Reminded by the ACRES email yesterday, I wanted to check out how bad the spill was along this stretch and offer my help after the Ubin shoot. This was what I saw at the beach...

Scores of foreign workers waiting at the beach.
They had just unloaded a few truckloads of equipment

At a call from their supervisor, the group trooped towards the jetty - a few truckloads of them. Many of them lugged their heavy equipment, trolleys, shovels and sacks with them.


Never having seen any oil spill clean-up before, I decided to join them...

All of them congregated at the Changi Point Ferry Terminal. Their supervisors tried to organize them into orderly groups to board the bumboats. The maximum capacity per boat as 10-12, excluding the weight of the equipment.

There were moments of tension and frustration. It was no joke transporting 108 people from the Changi to Ubin. It took more than 10 bum boat rides.

Much waiting was required. Speedboats were used to transport equipment to the tug boat the booms out at sea...

Towards the end of the boarding, the supervisors realized that some workers did not bring their equipment along. There was a large pile of sacks and shovels left behind. It was up to the supervisors and the remaining workers to bring these to Ubin by themselves.

Doing a tough job well...
 
Arrival at Ubin...

When we reached Ubin, we had to call for a lorry. (Now, whoever heard of lorries in Ubin? We've only taken vans so far!) There were many sacks, foam and other equipment to bring to Chek Jawa. The islanders chipped in to help too.

Even though we were on an offshore island, the same safety regulations for transporting workers still applies. (The new LTA guidelines on transporting workers came into place on 1 September 2009. Read more...) The workers were told to sit on the deck of the lorry, and against the side railings. Phew...