Suicide call led rescuers to Highland Towers

It was lunch time on Dec 11, 1993, when the fire and rescue department unit from Balai Hang Tuah received a call that someone had committed suicide at the Highland Towers condominium.

Azmi Morah Abas was among the eight officers on duty that went to the scene at Taman Hillview, Ampang.

“When we arrived, we saw the two (remaining) blocks. A guard came and told us there was no suicide, but there were deaths from the block that collapsed.

“It was then we saw what really happened. Our instincts kicked in and the first thing we did was to manually search for victims who might still be alive,” Azmi told a press conference at the Fire and Rescue Department headquarters in Putrajaya today.

Azmi recalled that the building was still shaking as he searched among the remains.

“We could hear voices calling for help…One of them was a Ms Nakajima. I climbed down nearly 30-feet and the operation took us over 90 minutes.

“When I got out, there was already a big crowd,” he said.

Azmi said Nakajima eventually passed away after being taken to the hospital.

There were only two survivors from the incident, Nur Hamidah Nadjib and her mother Umi Rasyidah Khoiruman, and they were reunited with Azmi and his team members.

Nur Hamidah, now 24, was only 18 months old at the time of the incident.

A photograph of Nur Hamidah being carried out by former federal police Criminal Investigation Department director Zaman Khan had gone viral on social media earlier this month and led to the reunion today.

First to arrive

Earlier, another fireman involved in the rescue operation, had also expressed his intention to meet with the ‘miracle baby’ as Nur Hamidah is known here.

Norizan Saad said there were 170 officers on the ground that day but their team was the first to arrive on site. Also on the team were M. Mahandran, Mazlan Kamin, Zulkifli Mohamad, N Yogaraja, Musa Abdullah and Engku Abdul Jalil Engku Ismail.

“The building was still shaking but the team decided to proceed and tried to rescue as many people as possible.

“I never dreamt that I would meet with Hamidah again…We even went back to the Highland Towers yesterday,” he said.

Fire and Rescue Department director-general Wan Mohd Nor Ibrahim, meanwhile, said that the reunion was a testament to the power of social media.

At the same time, he said that the Highland Towers tragedy was a valuable learning experience for the Fire and Rescue Department, prompting the creation of a trained disaster unit, along with the police and military.

“We learnt the importance of having a specially trained unit from the foreign teams that were sent to assist us during the operation,” he said.

In the tragedy, a 12-storey block of the Highland Towers condominium had collapsed after 10 days of continuous rain.

The incident killed 48 people, including 12 foreigners, and resulted in a complete evacuation of the remaining two blocks due to safety concerns.

The tragedy made headlines in many countries, leading to several sending teams to help with rescue efforts.

These included teams from Singapore, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan. -Mkini