... notable events : The day the jetty blew away

Today if you said you were going to Jurong Island, it would involve nothing more complicated than an exchanging of your identity card or passport for a security pass at the checkpoint, and a simple drive over a 300metre long bridge.

In 1996/1997, a visit to Jurong island meant cramming into a highspeed ferry that left from Jurong pier to one of the small islands, Pulau Ayer Chawan, Pulau Ayer Merbau, Pulau Merlimau, Pulau Pesek, Pulau Pesek Kecil, Pulau Sakra and Pulau Seraya, that made up what is now the reclaimed island of Jurong Island. I was a young engineer then, involved in building a mere SGD$2 million dollar temporary site office for the construction of oil refineries on what was still Pulau Sakra.

It was a dark stormy day when I stepped onto the ferry that morning to attend yet another boring site meeting on Pulau Sakra. The waves were choppy and there were wind warnings for smaller boats. Thankfully mine was a large ferry, I thought to myself. Looking at my watch, I was a good 1 hour early for my meeting. Lots of time to arrive at the pier at Pulau Seraya, catch the ride from the car the contractor would have sent for me, and be in the site meeting room in time for coffee. Little did I know that the world doesn't always work that way.

The storm hit halfway across the sea and the ferry began to heave and buck like a raging bull. I clung onto the seat in front of me as the ferry rose and smashed back with a huge splash only to rise yet again in a crazy determined cycle, custom-made to make you throw up your breakfast. I amazed myself that I didn't oblige the ferry despite it's best efforts but quite a few people did and because opening the windows would have let the pounding rain in, the acrid smell of vomit soon made itself apparent.

A journey that would have taken 30 minutes, took 45 minutes instead as the sea did it's damnest to sink the ferry. Many a person heaved a sigh of relief when the Pulau Seraya pier came in sight. I too caught myself calculating the swimming distance to shore if the need should arise.

Well, this isn't so bad, I though as the ferry began to pull in close to the pier. I'm still in one piece and not too bad in terms of making my meeting on schedule. I was thankfully right on the first count but way off on the second. For 30 minutes the ferry stayed at the pier while we continued to sit and wait for the all clear to disembark. A quick look at the ferry edge and the pier edge told us all we needed to know. The two edges which should be nicely aligned on the same plane level for us to hop across was now heaving and moving up and down as much as 1 metre in both directions with each other. Well... there goes my morning schedule. My meeting, slated for 10:00am in the morning was going to have to start without me and I had been in the ferry for over an hour already with the pier still heaving and up and down.

It wasn't until close to 10:30am when the seas subsided sufficiently for us to attempt jumping across, timing it just as the ferry edge was higher than the pier edge to leap down. My knees never felt more wobbly than they did that morning, and solid earth never felt so solid before in my life. The contractor's car was no where in sight as the driver had probably assumed that I wouldn't be coming.

A quick call from a payphone at the pier soon put that right and within minutes another car arrived to collect me. Over temporary bridges, across sandy mounds, over muddy fields and over recently tarmaced roads we raced from island to island, the car not having seatbelts which worked, nor having any numberplates and I suspect, the driver probably not even having a local Singapore driver's license, but this was Jurong Island. It was one big construction site and traffic rules didn't apply within site boundaries. There was a cowboy frontier feel to the place, just minutes from squeeky-clean downtown Singapore.

I breezed into the meeting room at close to 11:00am, half drench and with knees still wobbly only to learn that most of the people had yet to arrive as many of the big shots from the oil industry used private boats which docked at the smaller private contractor piers and they fared worse than my large stable ferry. I grinned rather happily at not being the last to arrive.

The meeting soon got underway and we could hear the storm outside increase in volume again but I very smugly smiled, safe as I was within the meeting room of the site office I built. The meeting proved a let down to the morning's excitement as I twiddled my thumbs and nodded sagaciously as a good professional should. It was nearing the end of the meeting when we heard the commotion outside. "What?" I asked, and received equally puzzled looks in return. There was shouting outside and the fear was that my lovely temporary site offices were collapsing with us inside! We filed outside in a hurry to see.

Initially we didn't notice anything amiss until one of the workers pointed to the sea. I looked and saw the waves pounding against the sand, splashing at least 3-4 metres high into the air. It took me awhile before I realised other than the unusually high waves, what was wrong with the scene. The sea was at least 50 metres closer to us than it was this morning. The sea had apparently washed away a 300 metre stretch of coast 50 metres deep in just under 2 hours, and laying on its side half washed up on the new shoreline was the 20metre steel gangway that used to lead to the private contractor's jetty that served the site. As for the floating jetty itself, it was no where in sight. The sea had been powerful enough to tear up all the moorings and wash the entire jetty out to sea to become a half-submerged shipping hazard somewhere between here and Indonesia. I never found out what happened to that floating jetty but knowing how busy the shipping lanes in these waters are, it was probably found and towed back to shore rather quickly, but who knows, perhaps it is still floating around somewhere just lurking and waiting for some unfortunate ship to run smack into 1-2 tonnes of floating concrete.

We joked about it, but very nervously eyed the still raging sea. Thankfully the rest of the day was uneventful, and the client's private boat came in close enough to shore to take us back later in the day when the storm was finally over and the sun had come out. But it was a nerve-racking brush with nature and ever since that day, I've had a very healthy respect for mother nature and what she can do when she isn't in a good mood.