By Carolyn Quek & Lim Wei Chean

THE waters took the basement carpark of the 6th Avenue Centre by stealth.

By the time Ms Pauline Tan, 30, went to check on her brand new Peugeot 308, the 1,400kg car was half-submerged - but floating, with its roof close to kissing the roof of the carpark.

Its windows were wound up, but water had entered it all the same, reaching the seats inside.

A colleague of the co-owner of a cafe in the building came to her aid - by swimming into the chest-high waters and guiding the gently bobbing car towards the carpark exit in 20 minutes.

Ms Tan, visibly vexed, said: 'We have a motorcycle in there, but we don't know where it is exactly.'

Three other vehicles and the motorcycle parked in the carpark were still submerged when The Straits Times dropped by yesterday at 6pm.

The flooding disrupted telecommunications transmission equipment installed in the basement carpark, cutting off telephone lines in the building.

Contractors for both the PUB and SingTel were trying to pump the water out in the evening.

Another basement carpark along Bukit Timah Road, the one in The Tessarina condominium, was also flooded.

Along some stretches of Bukit Timah Road, the flood waters forced bus commuters to take refuge on bus stop seats.

Traffic was at a standstill. Stuck in many cars, taxis and buses were several anxious students from Hwa Chong Institution (HCI) and National Junior College (NJC), who were supposed to take their A-level physics exam at 2pm.

An HCI spokesman said 15 students, including three from NJC, sat for their paper at 3pm in a separate classroom.

An NJC spokesman said several students turned up bedraggled. Teachers gave them a change of clothes and time to settle down, before they were taken to a separate classroom to take their exams. All exam candidates who showed up late were given the full hour and 15 minutes allotted for the paper.

Nanyang Primary School's vice-principal of administration Loh Yuh Por said one of the school gates facing Coronation Road had to be closed as it had become impassable to cars.

The floods and traffic snarls outside kept pupils stuck in school, waiting for their parents or school buses to show up.

A police spokesman said that, as of 4pm yesterday, the police had received 46 calls for help. The Automobile Association had got more than 20 calls for help, mostly from the Bukit Timah area, as of 4.30pm yesterday.

Businessman Joseph Wong, 43, said: 'I've used this road for many years but this has never happened before. It's just a very third-world kind of experience. I don't understand why this kind of flooding can take place in this prime residential area.'

Click on thumbnail to view (Photos: Stomp, ST)

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