Landslide cuts off road link
The road about to collapse is only passable by motorcycles and on foot.
By Famas
KAPIT: Continuous heavy rain has loosened the soil structure and thus triggered a major landslide along Jalan Melekun/Lepong Baleh road located about 7km from the town, cutting off the road link for the residents along Jalan Melekun/Lepong and its nearby areas including Kampung Sawang, Lepong Baleh, Rumah Jugo, Rumah Gawan, Rumah Likong, Rumah Jaraw and the logging camp log pond at Sri Amang this morning.
The landslide was believed to have started late Tuesday night. A van driver, identified as Ikau from a longhouse at Lepong Baleh, said the road was still passable at about 6:00 am on Wednesday morning, though there were some cracks.
However, due to heavy traffic passing along that particular section of the road, the cracks became bigger and the section soon became impassable to traffic.
As a result of the landslide, all the vehicles from Jalan Melekun/Lepong Baleh were stranded, including the vans transporting passengers to Kapit town. However, based on mutual understanding among the van operators, passengers on their way to Kapit were ferried by the vans at the opposite side of the road while those passengers going back to Jalan Melekun were ferried home by the vans that were stranded in the opposite direction.
Motorists and passengers passing by the landslide area were advised to take extra precaution, and to keep away from the area as far as possible, in view of the possibility that the whole section of the road might collapse at any time.
The Public Works Department, upon receiving news on the landslide, was quick to spring into action, and managed to make a diversion access road to allow motorists to pass through the sunken section of the road.
Earlier this year, a section of the road at Jalan Melekun located about 200 metres further up the existing landslide was eroded due to landslide.
Meanwhile, a section of the road at Jalan Abang Suhaili at Kampung Baru here was eroded by flood water yesterday morning.
1 comment:
My own experience was Kampung Bidak, Padawan. 6 houses were destroyed in a landslide which happened on 29 December 2006, luckily it happened at 3pm, if it was at night, it could have causes lost of lives..., I was very tensed becos there was not much we could do at that point of time, it was the end of the year, people were in the holiday mood, supply of materials were hard to get becos they asked to wait after the New Year...
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