Batang Kali: sweeper team to look for missing nine outside ground zero

BATANG KALI – A special sweeper team has been deployed to locate the nine remaining victims of the Father’s Organic Farm landside in Gohtong Jaya here on the fourth day of the search and rescue operation.

Selangor Fire and Rescue Department assistant operations director Hafisham Mohd Noor said seven members of the sweeper team will focus on the river located at ground zero of the search area.

“Since excavation efforts at the current area has reached a negative level, meaning we have reached the original ground of the campsite, and having failed to locate any victims, we decided to deploy three sweeper team members to search for victims outside ground zero.

“The focus of the search is the murky areas of the stream to search for victims there. We have already done a survey of all the locations we identified, but we still failed to find anything,” he told reporters at a media conference at the site of the tragedy here today.

Hafisham also said the search team decided to cut down some trees and use them as flooring for excavators to travel over the difficult soft ground to reach the search and rescue site.

Meanwhile, Hulu Selangor district police chief Suffian Abdullah said 124 rescuers have been assigned to work with 11 excavators to locate the remaining nine missing victims.

“We (the rescuers) will not give up hope, and we will work hard and redouble our efforts to find them,” he said.

He also said that the wife and child of one of the nine victims visited the search site to check on the victims’ list and confirmed that their names were on the list.

The rescue operation has entered the fourth day and is expected to continue until late at night following good weather conditions and no rain.

The landslide tragedy happened at 2.42am Friday and resulted in the deaths of 24 victims, with another nine still missing out of a total of 94 people. Sixty-one victims survived. – Bernama, December 19, 2022