Subang SkyPark comes tumbling down

Ok ok the airport did not collapse but rather THIS did!

It’s the unipole which carries (or used to carry) the advertisement for Subang SkyPark. Not a very good omen to the newly reopened airport huh? It must have fallen due to the high winds that accompanied the thunderstorm this afternoon.  Ihe signboard stood in the large roundabout at the end of the Subang Airport Highway. It was really lucky that it fell northward into the roundabout rather than into traffic.

I was leaving work when my colleague alerted me to an incident at the roundabout but stopped short of telling me what it was.  I saw it as I was approaching but at first could not place what it was or what had happened. Then as I went around the roundabout it dawned on me that the 60 plus foot unipole had come crashing down. I went around twice before stopping my car to take these photos.

You can actually see how big the signboard is by comparing it to the full size MPV in the foreground. The unipole had it;s base closer to the south side of the roundabout and would have landed smack on the road had it fallen the other way.

The design of the unipole is almost akin to the mast of a ship. in a ship it is highly desirable for the mast to “catch” and harness the energy of the wind to drive it forward. But the opposite is true in the unipole. I wonder how safe the hundreds of other such towers actually are? Is there a government body that checks their design and construction? Is there anybody maintaining them after they have been installed?

I ‘ll bet there will be politicians who will try to get some mileage from thsi incident and after a few months everythign will be forgotten again but not after a task force is formed to investigate the reason for ths incident at the cost of a few hundred thousand Ringgit. Another typical major incident handled the Malaysian way.