Military Intervention???

"Besides using ropes, are there really no other ways?" Thats my translation of the Wan Bao headlines. According to the news, it took a lengthy 30mins to rescue each victims. Most are left dangling on the ropes as they are lowered to the ground. That is sure to make lots of frighten hearts and post incident psychological impact on the mind. Now the question is why call the civil defense for the rescue when we could actually do it this way...



Yup. The good old Helicopter rescue. Once upon a time in 1983, Singapore pulls off a spectacular rescue of stranded victims from the cable cars using our good old UH-1 Huey Helicopters (now retired). Surely we could have emulate this success on another Singapore icon, the Singapore Flyers. In fact, this could be the though of many newspaper readers. Why not? Why use the time consuming rope method when we could just hover a Chinook or Super Puma over the wheels, lower an aircrew, pick up the victims and repeat the whole process again until all are safe and sound?

Think... the 'Cable Car Incident' was a life and death situation. At anytime, the capsule could plunge 55m into the see, killing anyone in it either by impact or drowning or both. Back than the decision to call for military intervention was an obvious one. There is tremendous difficulty for rescue personnel to scale the cables, reach the victim and get them to safety. Lots of unknown back than, will the remaining cables fail due to the snapped cables on the other side of the cable car system? Thus the urgency to extricate all victim as soon as possible.

In the case of the Singapore Flyer Incident, this is clearly not a life or death situation although the rescue could have been shorter if the management already had prepared for such contingency before hand. Well, a glamorous wheel, well known around the world, made in Singapore and with lots of money... who would expect a simple circuit board fire to stop this huge monument of ours from turning? Its like the rat scaring the elephant. The lengthy rescue time could only add more fear and anxiety to the capsules' occupant at that moment. One lady even have to resort to peeing in her baby diapers after holding her bladder for 4 hours.

But, its not Life and Death. The Singapore Flyer is still structurally sound and confirm will not collapse 911 style. Using the helicopter could be even more dangerous though with all those support structure around, there are potential risk of entangling the rescue hoist cables. Flying near the Singapore Flyer massive structure is no easy task as well... the pilot can't fly too low thus the rescue hoist cables got to extend longer. Than there is the wind the will oscillate the rescue hoist cables threatening to swing the rescuer aircrew or the victim into the structure. The swinging will only get worst as the hoist cable extend longer.

Weighing the risk of using Military Intervention and the lengthy rescue effort of Civil Intervention. My opinion is to go for the safe but slow method rather than the fast and risky method. Imagine something went wrong and something crash. Ironically, the slow but safe method created such a big headlines in the news paper. When the shit hit the fans, there bound to be people complaining about efficiency of rescue effort.

I think we all should appreciate the SCDF personnel from Central Fire Station for their prompt respond and courages effort scaling the Singapore Flyer's structure to reach each strand victims. Those are scary heights and strong winds they got to deal with. Maybe the newspaper should have wrote article about the brave SCDF personnel involve in the rescue effort rather than focusing everything on scared shit victims. The unsung heroes of the day only get a mini column in the Wanbao about their plans that did not materialize because the Flyer was back in operation before they could carry out further rescue effort. This are the little voices that are not heard. Whats wrong with using ropes anyway? Its the best proven device for rescue... don't expect Superman.