HULU SELANGOR: The body of a girl in pink pyjamas was found after rescuers dug unrelentingly through mud about 17m deep – or four storeys – to make a breakthrough after a futile search over the previous 72 hours.
“As excavators dug the ground to find the girl’s body, water continuously leaked into the hole, endangering the rescuers,” said Selangor Fire and Rescue Department assistant director (operations) Hafisham Mohd Noor.
He said safety officers had been deployed to survey the area.
The remains of the girl, believed to be between six and 10 years old, was found near four bags containing clothes and a laptop computer on Tuesday night.
Hafisham said the girl’s body in particular proved a challenge to extract.
“She was found 17m deep, beside a boulder in an area in Sector C that we had already searched,” he said.
“We had originally dug about 12m down in the area where the girl’s body was found.
“But thanks to assistance from the Armed Forces, we could locate and extract the body after digging another 5m at 10.49pm on Tuesday.”
The search for the Batang Kali landslide victims is focused on a sprawling 3ha campsite that has been divided into four sectors: A (hillview), B (farmview), C (riverview) and D (greenhouse).
At 11.16am yesterday, the body of a man was found in Sector B.
“The man seemed to be in an embrace with a dog while another dead dog was found close by,” said Hafisham.
He said the man was believed to have brought three dogs with him to Sector A, according to a missing person’s report.
“There is a possibility that he had gone camping in Sector A but was swept away by the landslide to Sector B,” he added.
The body, he said, was found at a relatively shallow depth.
He said the discovery of the man’s body would conclude the search and rescue (SAR) operation in Sector B as no other body was expected to be found there.
The discovery of these two bodies meant that the landslide, which struck at 2.42am last Friday, had so far taken 26 lives.
Seven people are still unaccounted for, while 61 others had been rescued.
Hulu Selangor district police chief Supt Suffian Abdullah said 106 personnel, 11 excavators and four sniffer dogs from K9 units had been deployed, in addition to a few more sweeper teams which combed the affected areas yesterday.
“Our men are re-energised (after they found the two latest victims). With this increased morale, we are hopeful that we will be able to find the other seven victims,” he said.
Hafisham, however, noted that if they were not found by the seventh day, it would be nearly impossible to find their bodies intact.
“After seven days, bodies begin to decompose rapidly, especially under heavy pressure from the ground above,” he said.
In a Bernama report, Inspector-General of Police Chief Tan Sri Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani was quoted as saying that the police were in the process of matching the data of the victims who were still missing with the police reports lodged by family members and next of kin.
“After this, we will do the matching and determine the real number we believe are still missing,” he said.
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