An escalator at Punggol Waterway Point shopping mall dislodged on November 29, 2019.

The incident was documented by Prissay Tan on the blog, Punggol Babies.

In her post, Tan recounted her fear as the escalator step dislodged.

"With an infant in my carrier, we heard loud clanking sounds before the steps popped up right before my eyes. I was just a step away from that dislodged step.

I hugged my baby with my shivering arms and turned around asking the crowd to go back up."

Here is one of the photos she shared of the incident.

Dislodged step

A spokesman from Waterway Point told Mothership that the malfunction was caused by a "foreign object".

"At around 3:45pm yesterday (Nov 29), an escalator at Waterway Point Basement 1 suffered a malfunction after a foreign object caused some steps to be dislodged.

The affected area was cordoned off, and security personnel were on site to re-direct customers. There were no injuries reported."

The escalator will be restored to service once it is verified to be safe for operational use.

Shoppers are reminded to take care while using escalators, especially if they are handling trolleys, prams, or carrying heavy items. We advise that these shoppers consider using the elevators instead.

We regret any inconvenience caused.”

Not the first time

A previous incident had also prompted Waterway Point to remind shoppers to not use prams and trolleys on escalators, for fear that the wheels may get "wedged between the escalator steps and cause the steps to be unable to retract normally into the escalator pit".

This previous incident took place in Sep. 2019.

According to a CNA article, there is almost "an incident a day" on escalators.

Mothership also understands that the incident might have been caused by someone pushing a pram on the escalator.

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Image from Punggolbabies blogspot