The coming and the going

MY two colleagues and I arrived in Kundasang (Sabah) at 1.30am – 18 hours after a 5.9 magnitude earthquake rocked Mt Kinabalu at 7.15am on June 5, sending shockwaves reverberating through Ranau District.

If it were not for the long wait in Miri to get a connecting flight to Kota Kinabalu we would have reached the Sabah capital a few hours earlier. Such is the sorry state of our air connectivity.

By 6am we were on the way to the operations centre at the disaster zone, stopping by a kampung called Massilau where we met some 10 villagers from the youthful age of 19 to the middle age of 60. They were holding an overnight vigil.

“We have not slept since the quake at 7.15am yesterday,” Cladeeryn Mohidin revealed.

In the next breath, the 19-year-old quivered: “I saw the mountain moving.”

I could see he was still in a state of shock and what he could have meant, I surmised, was the abrupt release of tremendous seismic pressure had caused the mountain to shake and he had seen the raw power of Nature unfolding before his eyes.

“It lasted about 10 minutes. Then I saw black smoke.” There was intense fear in the eyes of this young man who moved to Kampung Massilau after marrying a local girl.

Looking a little more composed was Khajili Sumail, 41, who noted: “They need to make sure the ground is settled and there are no loose debris. This is not going to take months but years. They also have to repair the damaged trails.”

For many who depend on Mt Kinabalu for a living – the mountain guides, the lodge operators and the food outlet owners – uncertainty hangs over their future.

How are they going to get by with their daily bread taken away in the blink of an eye by a powerful earthquake? And what is more worrisome is that there is no clue as to how long their plight will last.

At the foot of the mountain, a young Billy Joannes said his brother, Valerian Joannes, a mountain guide for two years, had perished in the earthquake.

Valerian was supposed to get married in November this year. The air was filled with sadness and sorrow as Billy spoke to us. With him were his nephew Issac Joannes and a few friends.

Meanwhile, more news in the aftermath of earthquake was released by the officials on site – none good for the day. Numbers were given but no identities and no names.

Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun explained that families of the victims needed to be informed properly before the authorities could release names.

“It’s the cruelest thing to learn of the mishap of your family member through the media,” he said.

Pressed further by the foreign media to confirm the identity of the Japanese climber who did not make it down, he said as a matter of policy, it was better to inform the family of the deceased first.

“I understand in your profession, you need to outdo one another to get the latest information. Your responsibility is to your editor but my responsibility is to the family.

“I would like to believe that I will break the news to them in a more dignified manner.  I hope you understand because sometimes, there are things we cannot tell you simply because it is out of respect for the next of kin.”

It was evident that the operations centre, handling the daily press conference, was only respecting the wishes of

the families when it decided to release the names of the victims – after obtaining confirmation – to the next of kin first before the media.

It was a reasonable approach and the media reporting from the scene could live with that.

But as helicopters scoured the mountain for survivors and bodies of victims, social media, mostly not at the scene, had a field day, busy circulating heaps of earthquake photos while responsible media sources were compelled to debunk the questionable authenticity of some of these photos.

Our newsroom did some digging and discovered that many of the Mt Kinabalu earthquake photos were actually derived from quarters which had snapped photos of earthquakes that had occurred elsewhere – such as in Myanmar, Thailand and even the US and Nepal.

It seemed “anything goes” in social media. It was chaotic.

While a few of the survivors’ accounts surfaced online, painting a very bad picture of the SAR performance in crisis, survivor Lee Yoke Fah talked to us and said he felt blessed to have come out of the disaster alive but regretted he was unable to help others.

He probably did not realise it but the fact that he had chosen to walk down the mountain instead of waiting for a helicopter to pick him up, believing those injured needed the service more than he, is an act of courage and valour.

The sixty-year-old had commendably put the needs of others above self.

While detractors and armchair critics started the blame game, throwing barbs at the authorities for failing to issue early warnings and at the SAR services, I asked Masidi whether it was unkind for me to say the state was unprepared for a disaster of such a scale and he replied: “Well, unprepared may not be the right word. The earthquake was not ‘reasonably’ expected to happen. I don’t think so, not in this particular case. In those days, the strongest tremors would be just 2.4 to 4. It was never this magnitude.”

Yes, for one, a geologist Alexandar Yan believed if monitoring systems were in place, there was a possibility that people could be pre-warned to stay away and lives saved.

But, still, we know to accurately predict the occurrence of an earthquake is as difficult as climbing a mountain. Who could have foretold Mt Kinabalu would be hit by an earthquake on June 5? Or Nepal a month earlier, for that matter.

Masidi said the Sabah government was committed to growing the tourism industry in the state while at the same time, take steps to put the safety of people above all other considerations.

Asked what word went through his mind or best describe his state of mind after experiencing a 4.5 aftershock, he said: “Surprisingly, it is not scare.”

We experienced 25 aftershocks – asleep or awake. Now in my quieter moments, I could not help but recall the doom predicted for us by the taxi driver in Miri before we emplaned to the Land Below The Wind.

The cabbie said rather discouragingly that our trip to Sabah in the midst of a powerful earthquake that “moved the mountain and sank it by two feet”, would be a river of no return for us.

Admittedly, it was not the joyous lyrics of my Sunday school song: “You shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace, the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.”

But gratifyingly, what the taxi driver predicted did not come to pass and we were able to return home in one piece.

Whether the name of the mountain is derived from the Kadazan words – Aki Nabalu – meaning the revered place of the dead – or whether it is from the legend of a broken-hearted wife who turned into stone waiting for the return of her husband, or even from the Kadazandusun story of a great king who lorded over the mountain, the magnificent view of Mt Kinabalu remains unshaken despite the earthquake chewing chunks off its rocky contour.

This too shall remain –

I lift up my eyes to the mountain –

Where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord

The Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip –

He who watches over you will

not slumber. (Pslam 121:1-3)

This Psalmist ends this Song of Ascents with: The Lord will watch over your coming and going.