Elite rescuers suffered chemical burns on limbs

TNP PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG

They worked 15m below street level, in wet cement up to their waists, to find two missing men when scaffolding at the Downtown Line 1 construction site collapsed last month.

The members of the Singapore Civil Defence Force’s elite Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team had suffered chemical burns to their limbs from additives in the cement.

Despite this, they told The New Paper in an interview that they relied on experience and instinct to locate and extricate the dead workers buried in the cement. The rescue operation took nine hours.

Read the full report in The New Paper on Tuesday (Aug 7).