SINGAPORE: Shortly before 6 p.m. on Jul 26, 2025, a woman’s car fell into a sinkhole along Tanjong Katong Road South, after a part of the road collapsed.
The frightening incident, which was caught on video and posted on the SG Road Vigilante Facebook and YouTube accounts, occurred near a PUB worksite.
Fortunately for the driver, a group of migrant workers in the area quickly acted to rescue her. She was then brought conscious to Raffles Hospital.
Now, the woman, Pearly Lim, has finally spoken out about the incident. In an interview for the Christian news and devotional website Salt&Light, Ms Lim opened up about the experience, including how she thought of her young daughter after her car fell into the sinkhole, and how thankful she is to one worker in particular.
The story of the ‘sinkhole woman’
Ms Lim had been driving home from visiting a friend, stopping at a junction in Tanjong Katong Road. When given the signal that she could go on, she heard someone yelling for her to stop. To her horror, the road around her began to crack and sink, and her black Mazda fell into the sinkhole.
Her car plunged into the darkness of the hole, and Ms Lim hung upside down. She told Salt&Light, “My car windscreen had cracked, and water was gushing in. I had to hurry to get out.”
“There was a split second when I felt like giving up. As humans, sometimes we wonder what it’s like to come face-to-face with death. It was not fear I felt. It was overwhelming sadness at the thought of not seeing my loved ones again. At that moment, I really, really missed (her 13-year-old daughter) Anya,” she continued.
She was able to unbuckle her seatbelt, and although her feet were stuck, Ms Lim was able to crawl out of the car.
One of the migrant workers played a key role in her rescue, as he calmly directed her to step on the bigger pieces of debris to climb up the hole, and leaned into the hole to the point of his upper body being fully in it. When Ms Lim had climbed high enough, he told her to jump, and when she did so, he grabbed her hands and pulled her out.
“I was incredibly thankful to him,” she said.
What causes sinkholes? Are you and I in any danger?
Sinkholes are depressions in the ground that occur when soluble bedrock is dissolved by water. This results in the land above losing structural support and collapsing.
This can occur naturally over time, although it takes thousands of years. However, sinkholes are also often triggered by human activity, including pumping groundwater, mining, or damaged utility pipes.
Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu said in Parliament on September 25 that at around 5:50 p.m., workers at PUB’s construction site noticed that one of its reinforced concrete caisson rings had failed, which resulted in soil flowing into the bottom of the site’s 16-metre-deep shaft. Around the same time, a sinkhole formed along a section of Tanjong Katong Road South adjacent to the worksite.
As to whether or not people are in danger of being swallowed up by a sinkhole, such occurrences, though dramatic and even terrifying, are fortunately rare.
Having said that, as climate change has caused more extreme weather at the same time that infrastructure has aged, the number of sinkholes in urban areas has increased.
Some common warning signs that a sinkhole may be developing are new circular cracks in the ground and sagging trees or posts, or fresh holes in a yard.
Read also: Beyond heroism: Sinkhole rescue prompts questions about how migrant workers are treated
