Then and now: Gone with the rain in Singapore
Whether 1845 or 2025, some things in Singapore never change. Snippets on how we reported them then and now.
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On Feb 20, 1953, 100mm of rain reportedly fell in two hours in Singapore, causing widespread floods and chaos, including in Scotts Road (above).
PHOTO: ST FILE
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In just minutes, water had rushed down the steps to the basement shops at Liat Towers in Orchard Road, inundating a Starbucks cafe, Wendy’s burger joint and Massimo Dutti clothing store on Dec 23, 2011.
Customers waded through knee-deep water or stepped on chairs to get to drier ground, as 152.8mm of rain – half of what December typically got in the entire month – lashed Orchard Road over three hours that day.
Not only Liat Towers, but the basement shops at Lucky Plaza were hit too, by what national water agency PUB called “ponding”.
It drew a biting retort in Parliament the next month from then Environment and Water Resources Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, who said: “PUB should not have used the word ‘ponding’. As far as I am concerned, I call a spade a spade. A flood is a flood.”
Be it ponding or flooding, the weather is an evergreen topic in Singapore.
A Wendy’s employee cleaning up outside the burger joint at Liat Towers, where basement shops were flooded after heavy rain on Dec 23, 2011.
PHOTO: ST FILE
Reading through some of the earliest editions of The Straits Times, one imagines the British editors and readers of the paper sweating profusely as they lamented the heat.
The anguish can be felt in editorials like the one published in July 1864 that moaned: “The present season has been beyond all doubt the most trying that has been experienced in Singapore in the memory of the oldest residents.”
In 1927, an editorial noted that the last three days had been “oppressively” hot. “Every day is a Sun-day, yet without Sunday’s corresponding advantages.”
It was an even more bitter pill to swallow when other papers took a dig at Singapore’s unforgiving heat or torrential rains.
In January 1902, a column in the Pinang (Penang) Gazette joked that while Singapore had been enjoying “aquatic sports” on the cricket grounds, Taiping Hill was “dry and delightful”.
In response, an editorial in The Straits Times said: “No doubt we people of Singapore have had some reason to complain of the weather with which we have been blighted for the past fortnight, but that’s no reason why Taiping should mock us in our misery and exult in her own meteorological virtues.”
A rise in temperatures – not over editorials – often sparked grass fires or worries over water use.
Once in a while, drought might rear its ugly head, like in February 1914, when Singapore was “becoming scorched”.
But rain also unleashed its own set of problems.
On Jan 7, 1934, the paper reported that an elderly Chinese gardener and his wife died in East Coast Road when they were buried beneath hundreds of tonnes of earth after a landslide triggered by “phenomenal rain”.
“They were entombed while asleep, and their bodies were extricated yesterday.”
Four days of continuous rain had turned Singapore into a “lake-city”. On one day, 157.5mm of rainfall was recorded, the most in a single day in 11 years.
On Jan 15, 1951, The Straits Times reported that heavy floods left more than 300 families in the Kim Keat and Potong Pasir areas marooned, and needing relief to be brought to them by social welfare officers.
Floods could be deadly. On Nov 4, 1958, the paper reported that a 12-year-old boy swimming in a rain-swollen drain near the Pavilion Cinema in Orchard was swept away by the swirling water.
Singapore’s worst floods took place on Dec 2 and 3, 1978, during which seven people died and thousands were evacuated. This was when the highest rainfall was recorded in Singapore over 24 hours: 512mm.
Among the fatalities was a 24-year-old man who had been trapped in a bus that had plunged into a drain in Potong Pasir.
Women sitting on the hood of a car while waiting for flood waters to recede on Dec 3, 1978.
PHOTO: ST FILE
The death toll was reported to be the worst from flooding in Singapore’s history, surpassing the five who died in the Great Flood of 1969.
There were at least two other flood-related deaths in the 1980s – that of a 10-year-old boy who fell into a monsoon drain in Bukit Batok West in 1986, and a two-year-old boy who fell into a flooded drain in Cambridge Road in 1987.
Rescue workers carrying an aged flood victim to dry ground on Dec 3, 1978.
PHOTO: ST FILE
Since then, flood safety has improved, but with climate change the cause of higher temperatures and more extreme weather events now, readers have not stopped paying attention to stories about the weather.
A Jan 9, 2025, article warning of the risk of flash floods
Memorably, a Straits Times image widely shared on Facebook was posted on Dec 5, 2015, which showed a community plaza in Ang Mo Kio so flooded with water that it looked like a swimming pool.
One reader wrote: “Condo have their pool. We HDB also have leh.”
Another commented: “This is literally ‘ponding’. A pond has just been made.”
Ho Ai Li is assistant foreign editor at The Straits Times. She joined the paper in 2002 and has reported on both education and entertainment. A former foreign correspondent based in Taipei, then Beijing, she writes on pop culture, heritage and the history of Singapore.
