FIRE EVACUATION IN THE KALLANG-PAYA LEBAR EXPRESSWAY

Abstract

Singapore is a land scarce country, and transport infrastructure is finding its way underground the densely populated island. Apart from Mass Rapid Transit lines, Singapore is also moving its 9th expressway – the 12km long Kallang-Paya Lebar Expressway underground. Of 12km, 9.6km runs underground along estates such as Sims Ave and Airport Road. With motor vehicles running along such long distances, ensuring safe and swift evacuation during emergencies such as fire incidents is of paramount importance. Although the Singapore Civil Defence Force is required to arrive within 8 minutes of the fire incident, this 8 minute period is crucial to trapped occupants. This is to ensure that during this period, trapped occupants are able to remain safe and if possible, self evacuate from the tunnel. Thus, this research aims to investigate and analyze the tunnel’s attributes with regards to its effectiveness and efficiency of evacuation during this 8 minute period. This includes the infrastructure, communication and Mechanical & Engineering systems of the Kallang-Paya Lebar Expressway tunnel, as well as the level of awareness of motorists’ towards evacuation procedures in events of emergencies. This is done through a comprehensive research program including interviews with Kallang-Paya Lebar Expressway’s management, data collection through libraries and the Internet, and 2 computer simulations related to fire dynamics and evacuation. The outcome of the research showed that the above systems do play an integral part of the evacuation in the Kallang-Paya Lebar Expressway tunnel, and that it is supported by simulations’ results. It is found that the current technologies present in the tunnel is able to effectively and efficiently provide a safe evacuation system for trapped occupants before the Singapore Civil Defence Force arrives to provide assistance. This research serves as a future reference with regards to fire evacuation systems in underground road tunnels in local or international context.