GEORGE TOWN, June 24 – A Penang Island Municipal Council (MPPP) technician saw the closed circuit television (CCTV) recordings of a lightning arrestor falling onto a car along Macalister Road during a freak storm on the morning after the June 13 incident but did not report it.

The technician, who viewed the recording on Friday morning, only reported seeing traffic jams and strong winds on the recordings of a CCTV at New Lane and traffic jams and an electrical spark on the recordings of another CCTV at Jalan Zainal Abidin at about 6.35pmon June 13.

“The technician did not inform his superiors of the falling structure which had happened before the ‘electrical spark’ he reported seeing,” MPPP secretary Ang Aing Thye told a press conference here this afternoon.

The technician, who was in charge of operations at the council call centre, has been tranferred to another department pending further internal investigations into his alleged negligence.

The council’s preliminary investigations also revealed that the contractor in charge of the CCTVs had noticed a time lapse during routine maintenance of the CCTVs at New Lane and Jalan Zainal Abidin on Saturday, two days after the incident.

“This prompted him to replay the CCTV recordings of the two CCTVs and that’s when he noticed one of the CCTV had recorded the falling structure and he suspected that a car was hit and buried underneath,” Ang said.

The contractor had immediately called the police and asked the officer in charge to view the CCTV recording.

The CCTVs, installed by the council, are monitored by both the council CCTV operations and control room and the police operations room so the police would also have access to the CCTV recordings.

“The police officer at that time told the contractor that it is unlikely that any car was buried under the fallen structure,” Ang said.

Dissatisfied, the contractor personally went to the police operations room and the police told him that they were uncertain of what had happened.

Certain that a car was buried underneath the concrete beam of the lightning arrester, the contractor called the Fire and Rescue Department to watch the recording at the council’s CCTV operations and control room.

A Fire and Rescue Department officer watched the CCTV recording together with the contractor and the council technician at about 1pm on June 15 but did not say anything other than asking for a copy of the CCTV recording.

On that day, a car door was already unearthed from the crater left by the fallen concrete beam but the authorities, at that time, were still uncertain if anyone was buried underneath the debris.

A freak storm on June 13 caused a 40m length of a concrete beam and lightning arrester from the Umno building along Macalister Road to crash down onto the road below, damaging seven vehicles and killing a co-driver of a lorry, Jahir Hussain Sulaiman, that was also hit.

It was only three days later, late on a Saturday evening, that a car chassis was uncovered and its owner, economy rice seller Lim Chin Aik, 44, was believed buried in the crater underneath the concrete beam.

“We are not trying to blame anyone here but just revealing the findings of our initial investigations into this,” Ang said today.

Local government state executive councillor Chow Kon Yeow said the results of the preliminary investigations will be handed over to the commission of enquiry to be set up by the state to investigate into structural failures following two incidents that had killed three people including Jahir and Lim.

“The police and Fire and Rescue Department should clarify why the information from the CCTV was not used in the rescue operations,” he said.

Rescue operations to recover Lim’s body went on for three days before it was called off on June 17 due to concerns that further digging could affect the surrounding buildings.

Only parts of his Honda City were recovered from the crater and the chassis number was matched to that of his but no human remains were found.

A week before that incident, the ramp of the Second Penang Bridge which was under construction collapsed, killing a passing motorist Tajudin Zainal Abidin.

Last week, the Penang state government announced its decision to set up a commission of enquiry to investigate structural failures that had resulted in these two incidents.

Former Malaysian Bar president Yeo Yang Poh has been proposed to head the commission while the state will decide later this week on the other committee members to make up the commission.