IT SHOULD NOT

Disasters will occur, but lives can be saved if regulations are strictly followed with enforcement

IWAS in a hotel room in Washington, DC on the final week of my 3½-months fellowship at the United Nations when I received a call from George Munji, a fellow from Kenya, asking me to watch CNN.

“A building in your city just collapsed,” he said. “I'm serious. Go to CNN now. Now!” he bellowed. He was still on the line when I switched channel.

“Oh my God,” was my initial reaction before I hung up on him. The next thing I did was to recall if anyone I knew was staying at Highland Towers.

My former schoolmate and her family lived in the nearby Taman Sri Ukay. It was years later, when I was interviewing a senior official of an airline, that I found out his family were among the survivors of the ill-fated building.

That Highland Towers landslide, which claimed 48 lives, happened 24 years ago. It put my mother off staying in a high-rise building, but she has since accepted the fact that accidents can, and do happen, when God wills it so.

She now stays with my brother’s family on the 8th floor of an apartment block in Putrajaya.

We Malaysians are certainly very lucky compared with our friends in neighbouring countries; we’re not on any belt, be it volcanoes or earthquakes, so we are spared such catastrophes.

Malaysia is located in a tropical region, where rainfall is abundant, but we can still have fatal incidents due to the natural and made-made disasters such as landslides.

It was reported that the term “landslide” was first used by James Dwight Dana, an American geologist, mineralogist, volcanologist and zoologist, in 1838.

And, reports showed the earliest recorded landslide in Malaysia was in 1919, which claimed 12 lives. The first postMerdeka landslide was at Ringlet in Cameron Highlands in 1961, which killed 16 people.

Since then, there had been a slew of landslides throughout the country. Remember the mudslide at Genting Sempah in 1995, where 20 people were killed?

Or, the mudslide at Pos Dipang, Perak, in 1996 that wiped out an Orang Asli settlement; and the rockfall in Bukit Lanjan in 2003, causing the closure of the NorthSouth Expressway for six months?

What about the 2002 landslide at Taman Hillview in Hulu Kelang, where General (r) Tan Sri Ismail Omar lost eight family members, or the mudslide in Taman Harmonis in Gombak, which killed 8year-old Haseena Azman?

In 2008, some 20 bungalows in Bukit Antarabangsa were buried under tonnes of earth following a landslide in the area.

And, this week, it was heartbreaking to read that 11 local and foreign workers died in a massive landslide at the Tanjung Bungah housing project construction site in Penang.

Did we not learn from these incidents? I find that the rescue agencies are better prepared today for any worst case scenarios. But, that’s about it.

Hilly areas in Hulu Kelang, Penang and Cameron Highlands are considered high-risk sites, but the local authorities are still allowing developments to take place there.

A study, which appeared in the

last year, found that while geological conditions were the cause of slope failure in many countries, it was a different case here.

“In the case of Malaysia, most of the landslides occur as a consequence of flawed design, improper construction and nonmaintenance of slopes, which correlates with human errors,” said the study titled “A Study on the Contributing Factors of Major Landslides in Malaysia”.

It was conducted by Danish Kazmi, Sadaf Qasim and Sadia Moin from the NED University of Engineering & Technology of Pakistan, with I.S.H Harahap, Syed Baharom and Muhammad Imran of Universiti Teknologi Petronas.

Citing examples, they said the main causes of failure in the Highland Towers incident were design inaccuracies, poor supervision during construction and an inadequate drainage system.

Similarly, in the case of Taman Hillview and Bukit Antarabangsa, it was revealed that improper design practices and poor drainage system, aggravated by prolonged rain, were also the significant causes of the cataclysm.

The study stated the highest number of landslides in Malaysia took place in 1996, with 71 cases, followed by 68 cases in 1995.

I have been told that no kind of piling, no matter how big the pillars are and how deep they go in, is strong enough to keep a structure standing during major catastrophes like landslides. Even trees —

my friend’s late mother used to tell him — get uprooted when conditions go against nature.

The Tanjung Bungah landslide should not have happened. But, had it not occurred, would anyone have known that the developer of the residential building did not even have approval to undertake the project there?

It was only after the landslide when it was revealed that the application had been denied by the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry. No one bothered to check on it earlier.

It happened because it was allowed to happen. Natural disasters, like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis, are acts of God. But we can minimise, if not stop, the fatalities if there had been stringent adherence to requirements and enforcement.

Let’s not allow more innocent lives to be lost in the future.