GEORGE TOWN, Oct 19 — Penang Fire and Rescue Department Director Saadon Moktar said search and rescue operation to locate 10 other victims believed buried alive in a landslide in Paya Terubong will continue till late tonight.
He said rescue team are now waiting for the canine unit from Kuala Lumpur to help with the search and rescue operations.
“The wives of two Indonesian workers confirmed their husbands, Baktiar and Sabari, were missing while another worker confirmed his friend, a Myanmar worker, was still missing,” he said.
Other than the three, he said other construction site workers reported seven others missing, bringing the number of victims still missing to 10.
Saadon said they found two bodies earlier this afternoon, a 19-year-old Indonesian and a Bangladeshi, in his 30s.
They also rescued one worker alive from the site who broke his leg and was sent to the Penang Hospital.
Saadon said the landslide that occurred at 2pm today brought down about six containers and several wooden shacks placed on open spaces along the slopes, all of which were used as the construction workers’ living quarters.
“We are in the midst of finalising the headcount with the contractor and the police to determine how many people are still missing.
“For now, we are tentatively looking for 10 more,” he said.
He said there are a total 145 personnel from the fire and rescue department, police, civil defence and the health department involved in the rescue operation.
He said it has been a challenging operation so far as the containers were buried under the mud and they could not be certain of where the victims are.
He said the muddy and uneven soil conditions poses danger for the rescue workers.
“Once the canine unit arrives, we will be able to track down the victims and we will only call off the search and rescue operations once the canine unit confirms that there are no other victims buried underneath,” he said.
Earlier, Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow along with other state executive councillors and assemblymen visited the site.
Chow held a brief press conference and stressed that the state government’s stand was that all projects should be conducted with full safety precautions in place.
“There was a stop work order on the site and contractors were supposed to send a report on mitigation works today to DOSH but before they could do so, the landslide happened,” he said.
Chow clarified that the stop work order does not mean no works will be conducted entirely as works will still continue to complete dangerous sections.
He said this landslide area is not the same area as the place where concrete beams fell even though both incidents happened in the same project.
The project is a paired road project connecting Paya Terubong to Relau, cutting through Bukit Kukus, and is supposed to complete in 2020.
Last week, 11 concrete beams fell and broke on another site of the same project in which the Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) immediately issued a stop work order against the project.
The latest tragedy comes almost a year after another fatal landslide in Tanjung Bungah at a construction site of a housing project by a hillslope that killed 11 workers.
