GEORGE TOWN, Sept 5 — A massive concrete beam crashed onto a car before dragging it under Macalister Road here on June 13, a witness recounted from surveillance footage at an inquest hearing today.

Beach Street Fire and Rescue Department station chief Ismail Mohd Zain said he had watched the closed-circuit television (CCTV) recording repeatedly, in normal speed and in slow motion, to ascertain that a car was buried underneath the debris.

"I watched the CCTV recording repeatedly and saw a huge block of concrete fall suddenly onto the back of a car before it was pulled underground but I can't see the car number plate," he said in his testimony during questioning by conducting officer Siti Fatimah Talib.

He is the 15th witness of an inquest to ascertain the death of economy rice seller, Lim Chin Aik, who was believed buried underneath Macalister Road after his car was hit by a falling concrete beam during a freak storm on June 13.

In the storm, the lightning arrester of the Umno building along the road crashed to the road below, burying Lim’s car underneath and damaging seven other vehicles.

Efforts to recover his body were called off after four days of digging due to concerns that further digging could affect the surrounding buildings so Lim’s body was never recovered.

Only parts of his Honda City were retrieved from the crater and the chassis number was matched to that of Lim’s.

The inquest, before coroner Khairul Anuar Abd Halim, was ordered to ascertain the death of Lim as his body was not recovered and a death certificate could not be issued without proof of his death.

Ismail said he was initially told by a technician that something had fell on a car in the June 13 incident and that he was asked to watch the recording at the CCTV control room in Komtar.

"I was informed at 1.30pm on Saturday (June 15) so I went there to watch the CCTV recording and found it to be true that a victim may have been buried underneath the road," he said.

He had immediately informed his superior of this and went to the site where digging works to clear the debris from the incident was underway.

"I told the police at the site that I suspect that there was a victim buried underneath and the police informed me that there was also a missing person report so after that the clearing works have become rescue works," he said.

He had earlier recounted that when he was called to the scene of the incident on June 13, he saw concrete pieces and the lightning arrester on the road where about nine cars were damaged.

"Witnesses there did not say there was any other victim underneath the rubble, the water gushing from the crater in the road was also clear with no signs of petrol or blood so we assumed there were no other victims underneath and gave the clearance to start clearing works," he said.

Rescue operations to dig out the victim started on Saturday after discovery of the CCTV recording while the back and front portion of the car and car tyres were recovered at 10 feet deep, he said.

"We only recovered car parts but did not find any bodies or body parts from the digging works and we dug until 15 feet deep before the rescue works were called off on Monday (June17)," he said.

Earlier, a Penang Island Municipal Council senior technician Omar Md Kassim told the court that he did not notice anything unusual in the CCTV recording when he replayed it on the day after the incident, on June 14.

"I was told to check the CCTV recording and what I saw at that time was just heavy rain, strong winds and an "image error" before the CCTV black out," he said.

It was on June 15 morning, when a maintenance technician from the contractor in charge of the CCTV, replayed the recording on slow motion to him that he noticed that the "image error" was actually a recording of a concrete beam falling onto the road.

"I didn't think it was an "incident" until the maintenance technician, Zaheran, told me it was a recording of the concrete falling on the road and played it back in slow motion to show me," he said.

He said after Zaheran saw the recording, the latter had immediately called the police and the Fire and Rescue Department to inform them of what he saw.

"He called the Fire and Rescue Department personnel to come and watch the CCTV recording and after the watched the recording, they both went to the police headquarters to inform the police," he said.

The inquest, with Gobind Singh Deo on watching brief for Lim's family, continues tomorrow.