PUCHONG – A teen walking his aunt and grandmother home in Taman Wawasan here last night were told by neighbours to turn away and take a different route, or they would have walked into a huge crater after part of a road collapsed in a landslide.
Sarvasiddharth Pukalenthi, 18, who was with his aunt and grandmother, ran into a group of neighbours crowding the scene, but he couldn’t make out what was going on.
“It was like any other regular evening. I walked my aunt and grandmother back home to the next street from us.
“However, as we approached and went down the street yesterday, neighbours told us to move back. I didn’t know what the fuss was and just took a different route,” he told Scoop at the site today, adding that some neighbours were rather aggressive in telling him to go away.
Still curious after sending his grandmother and aunt home, he hopped on his bicycle and went back to the scene and found neighbours gathered around a gaping hole in the road.
“A number of trees had fallen in and a whole piece of the road was missing,” he said, adding that four cars had been damaged, too.
The landslide at Jalan Wawasan 3/9 occurred at 7.26pm yesterday following heavy rainfall. No one was injured though those four vehicles were damaged.
The landslide took off a chunk of road right in front of some homes, after which residents of nine houses were ordered to vacate.
A long-time resident of Taman Wawasan, who wanted to be known as James, said the road collapse worried him greatly as nothing like it had happened before in his two decades of living here.
“We have been living in the neighborhood peacefully, and this is the first catastrophe to hit the area.
“I hope it will never happen again. It was a worrisome and sleepless night last night… worrying about the aftereffects of this massive sinkhole that we see here today,” he told Scoop.
Meanwhile, another resident who did not want to be named, shared his theories about how uncleared litter could have caused the soil in the area to become waterlogged.
He said there was a monsoon drain at the base of the embankment – where the road was before it collapsed – and people would throw rubbish there which clogged the waterway, causing floods on the nearby Damansara-Puchong Expressway (LDP).
“There is a mountain of rubbish in the monsoon drain, piles and piles of it. Rubbish is thrown there all the time, and I believe it’s one of the causes.
“When there’s heavy rain, the LDP gets flooded. There is no place for the rainwater to flow to,” he said, adding that he believed the trapped water had caused soil movements.
“In the blink of an eye, this serene housing area is in chaos. It’s a nightmare for all of us who have never experienced such a situation,” the resident added.
A total of 26 houses near the landslide area will undergo structural checks, while 375 iron piles are being inserted into the soil to strengthen the collapsed embankment.
Work to stabilise the landslide area is set to last at least a week. – December 17, 2023