Rescuer injured while pulling himself out of the mud

 

Rescuers working in muddy conditions at the campsite tragedy site in Batang Kali.

BATANG KALI: A member of the Selangor civil defence force suffered a knee injury while taking part in the search for victims of a landslide here.

Erzvicly Fazikhan Zakariah was injured while trying to pull himself out of a mud sludge, a civil defence statement said.

Objects detected

Rescuers are reported to have detected five foreign objects during the search at the Father’s Organic Farm campsite in Gohtong Jaya.

Selangor fire and rescue official Hafisham Mohd Noor said the discovery was made through use of ground penetrating radar equipment.

Rescue teams cut

He said the number of rescuers tonight has been reduced due to safety factors and to lessen soil movement. The K9 units will also not be involved in nighttime searches to give them time to rest before resuming duties tomorrow,” he told reporters.

The landslide at the campsite at 2.42am last Friday resulted in 24 deaths with nine still missing, while 61 others survived.

Search near river

Seven members of a special sweeper team have been deployed to locate the nine remaining victims with efforts focused on the river located at ground zero of the search area.

Hafisham said excavation efforts had “reached a negative level, meaning we have reached the original ground of the campsite” and failed to locate any victims.

Three sweeper team members will now search for victims outside ground zero, in the murky areas of the stream.

“We have already done a survey of all the locations we identified, but we still failed to find anything,” he told reporters.

124 rescuers, 11 excavators

Hulu Selangor police chief Supt Suffian Abdullah said 124 rescuers have been assigned to work with 11 excavators to locate the remaining victims.

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