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Wednesday June 28, 2006

Girl killed in landslide at Sepanggar

By RUBEN SARIO

KOTA KINABALU: An eight-year-old girl was killed when tonnes of soil slammed into a wooden house on Monday night.

The incident occured near where a 50m-stretch of the Sepanggar highway leading to a port and seaside resort caved in.

Relatives said the body of Norshafidah Abdul Rahman was recovered at 5.30am yesterday by firemen, police personnel and Kampung Bundu villagers who had been frantically searching for her after the 11.30pm incident.

Norshafidah’s aunt Fatimah Ahmad, 28, said 10 other family members managed to flee the house moments before it collapsed.

ROAD COLLAPSE: The cave-in at a 50-km stretch of the Sepanggar highway on Monday night reduced traffic to a single lane.
“We heard a rumbling sound and a truck continuously blaring its horn. We realised that something was really wrong and fled,” Fatimah said, adding that at that time Norshafidah and her mother Norhata were asleep in a room while she and the other family members were watching television.

While fleeing the house Norhata lost her grip on her daughter who was later found under a pile of wooden beams.

Norshafidah: Found under a pile of wooden beams
Another house, belonging to supermarket sales assistant Masni Pilok, was also seriously damaged in the landslip which occurred even as people in many parts of the state capital were cleaning up after floods following a 12-hour downpour since Sunday.

“I was just about to go to sleep at about 11.30pm when I heard something hitting the wall of my house. I screamed to warn a family of four who were renting my house to get out,” said a shaken Masni, who has taken refuge in a neighbour’s house.

State Infrastructure Development Minister Datuk Raymond Tan told reporters at the site that the families in the remaining six houses in the village had been asked to evacuate as a precautionary measure.

He said Public Works Department (PWD) officials were investigating the cause of the road cave-in which had reduced traffic along the affected stretch of the busy Sepanggar highway to a single lane.

Tan said the PWD would also be investigating claims by nearby Kampung Karambunai villagers that large cracks had appeared along the collapsed stretch of the highway more than a week before the cave-in, and that no warning was given to Kampung Bundu villagers whose homes were nearby.

Kampung Karambunai villager Abdul Lamit Dimin who alerted the authorities to the cracks said he was surprised that only the large cracks were patched up.

“We felt there was something seriously wrong with the road, and merely patching it up was not enough,” he added.

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