SCDF officers searching for other workers who might have been trapped or injured. (Yahoo! photo/Jeanette Tan)Two foreign workers, a Malaysian and a Bangladeshi, were killed during a powerful shipyard explosion at Benoi Road in the Tuas area on Thursday afternoon.Both workers are reported to be from Haosen Marine Ptd Ltd. They were pronounced dead when paramedics arrived at 1.31pm.
The Ministry of Manpower has identified the two casualties to be a 43-year-old Malaysian Malay and a 20-year-old Bangladeshi.
Yahoo! Singapore understands that the two workers were working on a barge that was undergoing maintenance work when a powerful blast took place. However, there was no fire when the SCDF arrived.
It's believed that one of the two deceased workers was welding a hole in the barge when the resulting heat from the operation sparked a powerful explosion that ripped through the barge. The blast is said to have been caused by the build-up of pressurised air which was not released before the welding operation began.
The windows on the first floor of the UDL building next door were shattered from the impact of the accident. (Yahoo! …Witnesses Yahoo! Singapore spoke to at the scene and who were working in a nearby building said the blast was so powerful that it split the barge in two and caused the Malaysian worker to fly from the barge, over a building and into another workshop. They also said the deceased Bangladeshi's body was badly mangled, and that some of his limbs had detached from it.
The powerful blast also caused the metallic walls of the building beside the barge to be shredded apart. Sources told Yahoo! that fortunately, the rest of the team of workers supposed to be at the barge were inside the building attending a safety briefing.
Others working at a marine equipment workshop in the same building quickly ran out of the building after they heard the explosion happen. One said he was still dizzy and still reeling in shock from what had happened. His car, alongside another and a lorry, was damaged from the impact of the explosion, with its windows severely shattered.
The accident site at Number 3, Benoi Road, where a barge exploded from a suspected air pressure breach. (Yahoo! …40-year-old Jayanthi Maniam, who runs an oil and gas business, went to Benoi Road right after hearing about the accident. She said she has some marine equipment stored at the same site worth several hundred thousand dollars, but had not been allowed in to check on them.
"I don't know if my equipment is safe," she said. "I haven't had the chance to go in there to see, and I guess I'll only know the extent of the damage when I do."
Her sister, Doris, runs a marine repair workshop and has several family members working there.
People working near Benoi Road said they felt the whole stretch "shake like an earthquake". Building windows adjacent to the accident site were also shattered, and refineries across the pier were evacuated after alarms were triggered from the vibrations caused by the accident.
Netizens also reacted swiftly to the news.
Many took to micro-blogging platform Twitter to describe what had happened.
Twitter user @atypicalhuiyi tweeted: "Whole office shook when the explosion at the shipyard in Benoi Road happened. I feared for my life but I fear more for those working there."
Additional reporting by Jeanette Tan and Liyana Low
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