A Costly Cost-Cutting Catastrophe
The Lian Yak Realty Company began construction in 1969 of a six floor building at the corner of Serangoon and Owen roads in Singapore. It was completed in 1971, and housed the New Serangoon Hotel. The new establishment had an inauspicious start. In 1975, the hotel made headlines when 35 guests had to be hospitalized because of a carbon monoxide leak. Despite the bad press, the hotel recovered, changed names, and resumed operations. By the 1980s, the building housed a branch of the Industrial & Commercial Branch on the first floor, and a night club on the second floor. The other four floors were occupied by the 67-room New World Hotel. Things continued normal, and 11:25 AM on March 15th, 1986, when out of the blue, in less than a minute, the building collapsed.
Not a single wall or column were left standing, and the entire structure was reduced to rubble. The cause was the realty company’s cost-cutting at the design phase. It hired a cheap but incompetent architect, and cheap but incompetent engineers. They screwed up basic design and construction calculations. It was a costly mistake. The Hotel New World failure was one of the worst disasters in post-WWII Singapore. Initial rescue efforts were hampered by the fact that the government lacked personnel trained or equipped to deal with such a situation. Fortunately, some foreign tunneling experts were building a subway at the time, and they were sent in to spearhead the rescue.