It has been a week since Mother Nature unleashed her fury in Bukit Antarabangsa.


A pre-dawn landslide last Saturday flattened 14 houses in its path, killed four occupants and forced thousands of residents -- old and young, able-bodied and crippled -- to evacuate their homes.


The site of the landslide is a mere 200 metres from our home. Like other families in the vicinity, we were awakened at 4am by a loud rumble, then heard calls for help and minutes later, sirens from rescue vehicles dispatched to the scene. A helicopter or two hovered above with searchlight scanning the ground.


I took the following pictures over the past few days as a reminder of the aftermath of this disaster, when man fail to honour nature.






Alhamdulillah, we were not directly affected by the landslide but I decided to vacate our home all the same. Hours after the incident, the authorities warned of unstable soil on the slopes. Since the situation was uncertain and warnings were issued ever so often that Saturday, we packed our clothes and important documents, and took refuge at my sister’s house in Bukit Jelutong, Shah Alam to calm our nerves and access the situation from afar.


My elder brother who lives at Jalan Wangsa 7, a row of houses parallel to Jalan Wangsa 9 which is a block down where the landslide triggered, also took his family out to our sister’s in Bukit Jelutong.


We returned home on Tuesday evening and from our windows, watched the activities below; policemen and RELA personnel directing traffic, SMART and firemen marching in and out of the landslide site, and ministers and important officials visiting the scene.


The whole family now sleeps in the living room, decently dressed just in case we need to leave the house in a hurry. The whole family also follows me in the car whenever I leave the house to run errands.


It has been a week since that ill-fated day and over the past week we had had the prime minister and his deputy and their ministers, and bunch of officials making numerous statements pertaining to the perils of highland-living and the affirmative actions to be executed so as prevent recurrence of Saturday’s tragedy.


“No more highland development” they said. “Developments on highland areas will be reviewed,” they added.


“Developers must not lobby state governments to approve their highland projects”


“State governments must not approve highland projects”


Blah..blah..blah…….


Don’t these statements, pledges and promises sound so very familiar? How many times have we heard them before? I don’t know about you but I’ve heard those exact words uttered each time there’s a tragedy. I heard those pledges and fierce statements made during the Highland Tower tragedy which claimed 48 lives 15 years ago and heard them repeated again and again and again one landslide after another. Somehow, nothing was ever done about those pledges. Months after one incident, new projects took shape. The slopes were cleared of vegetations and new dwellings were built.


I bet the same will happen here in Bukit Antarabangsa. People would soon forget last weekend’s tragedy and life would return to normal. In a matter of months, new developments would take shape on a highland, if not in Bukit Antarabangsa, somewhere else in the country.


And I am sure, last weekend’s tragedy would not be last in this country. When another landslide occurs later, mark my word, we would be hearing those politicians and officials repeating the very same statements to control highland development. Don’t worry, you won’t miss much. You have heard them before!


I wonder how many more highland developments would be built and how many more lives would be lost before a certain affirmative action is taken.