"People were very orderly and that helped everyone to stay calm"This was what one of the people interviewed by an ST reporter at Plaza Singapura last night had to say concerning the fire scare that occured there slightly before 8pm. Since I was at the scene too, I can very much safely conclude that the people there were seemingly calm because, with the exception of seeing alot of smoke coming from the second or ground floor, most of them didn't know what in blazes was going on in the first place~!!
We were told, albeit vaguely, by staff to evacuate the building but there was no formal public announcement informing us about the nature of the incident and we had no way of knowing how long we had to wait before we could re-enter the building. Since my friends and I had already bought tickets for a 930pm show at the Golden Village cinemas upstairs, the latter was a matter of great concern to us... Then again, perhaps a public annoucement might cause everyone to make a mad dash for the exits but at the very least, there could have been an officer (and security pesonnel who converse in unintelligible grunts and hand signals don't count) or a mall representative on hand to enlighten the crowd abit.
Fortunately, we were allowed back inside the building half an hour later and thus, able to catch our film at the allocated time... (though being GV, I had to endure tonnes of commercials first before the show finally started -- the delay made me miss my last train!). A cursory check of today's Straits Times revealed that an electrical box outside Marks & Spencer had caught fire but firemen were able to extinguish the "blaze" in two minutes. Cool, eh?? ;)
