SINGAPORE — A person was taken to Khoo Teck Puat Hospital on Wednesday (Sept 13) night after a tree along the Seletar Expressway (SLE) fell and struck a moving vehicle.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force said in response to TODAY’s queries that it received a call for help at about 7.10pm on Wednesday. The incident was along SLE towards Bukit Timah Expressway, before the Woodlands Avenue 2 exit.

A video of the incident was published on the SG Road Vigilante YouTube channel on Thursday morning, with a description that read: “SLE towards BKE before Woodlands Ave 2 exit, falling tree strike vehicle on lane 1 of the expressway.”

In the clip, motorcyclists are seen switching to the leftmost lane of the expressway to avoid a tree that had fallen across two lanes on the right. The tree was situated along a divider of the expressway.

A black car, which appears to have been hit by the tree, later slowed down along the rightmost lane with its hazard lights switched on, a short distance ahead of the fallen tree.

Quoting the person who had supposedly submitted the video clip, the video description stated: “Had just changed lanes to exit the SLE when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tree on the road divider breaking at the bottom part, then falling onto the road and striking a black car squarely on the roof.”

Responding to queries from TODAY, the National Parks Board (NParks) said it was alerted to an incident involving an uprooted Australian Flame tree along the SLE at 7.46pm on Wednesday.

“As the tree had been moved to the centre divider and was not obstructing traffic, it was cleared on the morning of Sept 14,” it added.

On its tree management approach, NParks said trees are generally inspected once in six to 24 months — with a higher frequency depending on the tree’s locality and age — and regularly pruned to improve their structure and balance.

This is stepped-up during periods of adverse weather conditions to reduce the risk of tree failure incidents, NParks added.

“As an added precaution, we introduced advanced inspections on trees more than 4m in girth since November 2016.”

NParks said that with the strengthening of its tree management regime over the years, the annual number of tree incidents has fallen from about 3,100 cases in 2001 to around 480 in 2022.

An average of around 400 cases are reported annually since 2019, it added.