I knew from my colleague that a fire has broken out at Pulau Bukom at around 3:30pm on Wednesday (28-Sep-2011). He saw the news on STOMP and showed it to me. Since Bukom was just right in front of the window, I rolled up the blind and it seems to be under control at that point of time. But this shocking view greeted me around 7pm in the evening as I was winding down the blinds to call it a day.

Apparently, it has gotten worse and the fire went on for another 26 hours after that (according to the news). It wasn’t until 9:18pm on Thursday that the hundred over firefighters managed to put the fire out.

The first thing on my mind was, with a such a fire raging some people may have been hurt or killed. I am happy that Shell accounted for all its personnel. While some of my friends grumbled about the minimal media coverage, I subsequently discovered that access to Pulau Bukom is restricted to personnel working on the island only and that explains why there was no real time coverage on the island itself. A colleague who was in the Navy during National Service [NS] told me that the Police Coast Guard also maintained some picket ships around the island to prevent unauthorized vessels from approaching.

Anyway, some of the other things that were immediately on my mind was whether this fire was just a mere industrial accident, sabotage or more ominously, a terror attack. Whatever it was, there would certainly be some impact on global supply since Shell has its largest refinery on Pulau Bukom. I also wondered whether a sabotage or an industrial accident would have any impact of investor confidence and the position of Singapore as a major petrochemical center in the world. Simply put, with the economy confirmed to be heading south the year after, our little red dot does not need any more harm to its fragile economy.

As for terror attacks, Pulau Bukom has been attacked before in 31-Jan-1974 by 4 terrorists – 2 each from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Japanese Red Army. The perpetrators of this incident gained notoriety as the ‘Bukom Bombers’ or the ‘Laju Hijackers’.

I wouldn’t know of this when it happened since I was a toddler. I only knew about it because I read it on the papers as a teenager. Personally speaking, even though I thought Jurong Island is a larger and more tempting target, Pulau Bukom would have been a more logical target due to its isolation from the main island of Singapore. Regardless of the tactical difficulties in pulling off such an attack, Pulau Bukom is simply more difficult to support logistically (in terms of civil defense personnel and fire fighting equipment) and to reinforce militarily. Being much smaller than Jurong Island, a small force attacking the island would have the tactical advantage of having lesser ground to defend, not to mention restricting the ability of the Singapore Armed Force [SAF] to project its technological superiority as a result of the multi-billion facilities and investments on the island itself. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand that if you fire on the facility itself, you would risk its complete destruction. I can only hope that the defense planners of this country understand the strategic importance of this little island and have put in enough preventive measures to prevent that from happening.

Meantime, the government said it will be investigating the cause of this fire. Some news report that the Shell refinery could shut the facility down up to a month. I wonder what would the impact be to the employees of the facilities and whether they would have to take no-pay leave to stay home for the entire duration. I personally hoped that the investigations would be made public since it is in the interest of the citizens of this country to know the facts behind this incident which could have significant impact on the well being of our country.

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