Sunday morning's downpours triggered flash floods in flood- prone MacPherson as well as some parts of the Orchard Road and Bukit Timah areas.
This led to indoor flooding of the basement of Tanglin Mall as well as the basement carpark of Delfi Orchard in scenes reminiscent of the flooding which led to a public outcry last June.
But Orchard Road itself did not experience similar floods this time, said national water agency PUB.
This was despite more intense rainfall - 65mm of rain fell within 30 minutes yesterday compared with 100mm in two hours on June 16, 2010.
Heavy rains over eastern Singapore started from 6.30am yesterday, triggering the flash floods at MacPherson. The rain then moved to central Singapore, intensifying from 10 to 11am. The 124mm of rainfall recorded for the central area yesterday morning made up 77 per cent of the average monthly rainfall for June.
Along Bukit Timah Road, two out of three lanes were affected by the flash floods, leading to an hour-long closure of the stretch from Blackmore to Maplewood Road.
PUB said drainage improvement works now underway in that area should improve drainage capacity by the end of this year.
The water agency also said it mobilised staff and contractors to the sites once it received alerts of heavy rain, deploying tankers to Delfi Orchard and Tanglin Mall to pump out water from their basements. Traffic Police and Singapore Civil Defence Force officers were despatched to the flood sites.
In a bid to assure the public that its flood monitoring system is being enhanced, PUB said that it raised the number of water-level sensors in key canals and drains from 32 to 90 last year, and will add more to bring this to 150 by the year-end.
This led to indoor flooding of the basement of Tanglin Mall as well as the basement carpark of Delfi Orchard in scenes reminiscent of the flooding which led to a public outcry last June.
But Orchard Road itself did not experience similar floods this time, said national water agency PUB.
This was despite more intense rainfall - 65mm of rain fell within 30 minutes yesterday compared with 100mm in two hours on June 16, 2010.
Heavy rains over eastern Singapore started from 6.30am yesterday, triggering the flash floods at MacPherson. The rain then moved to central Singapore, intensifying from 10 to 11am. The 124mm of rainfall recorded for the central area yesterday morning made up 77 per cent of the average monthly rainfall for June.
Along Bukit Timah Road, two out of three lanes were affected by the flash floods, leading to an hour-long closure of the stretch from Blackmore to Maplewood Road.
The water agency also said it mobilised staff and contractors to the sites once it received alerts of heavy rain, deploying tankers to Delfi Orchard and Tanglin Mall to pump out water from their basements. Traffic Police and Singapore Civil Defence Force officers were despatched to the flood sites.
In a bid to assure the public that its flood monitoring system is being enhanced, PUB said that it raised the number of water-level sensors in key canals and drains from 32 to 90 last year, and will add more to bring this to 150 by the year-end.
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