A man was killed after a landslide struck the rear of his house in Taman Seri Rambai, Paya Terubong, on Sunday morning, bringing down a wall of the two-storey home as the household was up for the day.
The Penang Fire and Rescue Department received an emergency call at 8.36am and a team from the Paya Terubong station reached Lebuh Rambai 13 two minutes later, in an account carried by Pocket News. Three people were in the house at the time. Firefighters found one man trapped beneath the collapsed earth.
Health Ministry personnel pronounced him dead at the scene at 9.10am. He was identified as Wong Kar Lin, 73, a doctor at a clinic, and his body was pulled from beneath concrete rubble at 11.20am, Malay Mail reported. Firefighters worked with Civil Defence Force personnel to free him, and the body was sent to Penang Hospital.
The victim had been in the kitchen when the slope gave way at about 8am, and his wife and another member of the household were upstairs when they heard a loud crash below, Paya Terubong assemblyman Wong Hon Wai told The Star. His wife came down to find the rear portion of the house buried. She escaped unharmed.
Wong said the cause was still under investigation, including whether slope work tied to a housing development on the hills behind the row of houses played a part. “At this stage, we cannot say whether the landslide was caused by the housing project behind this neighbourhood or otherwise,” he said.
By early afternoon the Penang Island City Council had ordered an immediate halt to condominium construction and roadworks on the hillside near the site, mayor Datuk A. Rajendran said. Both projects had been running for more than a year and slope stabilisation was still under way when the landslide hit. State infrastructure committee chairman Zairil Khir Johari said the unfinished section was the one that failed.
Occupants of six houses judged potentially unsafe were advised to move out temporarily. Bukit Gelugor MP Ramkarpal Singh said residents of about 10 to 15 homes in the nearby row were told to stay away from the rear of their properties as rain continued, although they were not ordered out. A district-level disaster meeting was scheduled to set out follow-up action.
Assistant director of operations John Sagun Francis said continuous heavy rain since Saturday could not be ruled out as a factor, with the soil possibly destabilised before the slope failed. Crews were still clearing debris and checking the ground at 12.35pm.
The landslide came after overnight rain across Penang that also brought flash floods and fallen trees in several areas, with slope checks continuing along the hillside row into the afternoon.
