Tragedy.....

How if one day, while u watching television in your sitting room looking at the clock, its just about 3.30am...suddenly you heard something sounded like strong wind but when you looked out, the air was still and the trees were not swaying.

You back returned to watch the TV and again you heard an explosion like that of a bomb. You ran out of the house and saw the earth sliding down the hill slope and hitting your neighbour's house in front.
You shouted to wake up your family and alert your neighbours to run for their lives.
This is what happen right now at Malaysia.. we having one more nature tragedy at Bukit Antarabangsa near by the Higland Towers tragedy, 15 years ago......
A massive landslide occurred in Bukit Antarabangsa at about 3.30am last Saturday 06 December 2008. The landslide cut off access by the main road to the residential areas at Bukit Antarabangsa, trapping hundreds of residents. The landslide happened so fast but word got around through SMSes, radio or tv, and many people made a beeline to the disaster area.
This are the experience from one of the STAR newspaper writer...
At daybreak, this writer joined a group of onlookers at a row of abandoned houses at Jalan Wangsa 9 overlooking the disaster area...They decided to circumvent a security tape which had been put up by security officials to prevent people from going near the edge of the slope...The group of them was about 15 to 20 meters from where it all started....Suddenly the earth started to move slightly and many of the uprooted Flame of the Forest trees resumed their descent...The onlookers, many of them armed with camera phones, then ran helter-skelter.
Can you just imagine how was it??hmmmmm..
as reported, three of the dead have been identified as veterinarian Dr N. Yogeswari, 40, accountant Ng Yee Ping, 30, and Shaiful Khas Shaharuddin, 20...The body of Indonesian maid Surina was removed from the rubble at around 7.40pm Saturday...
this another sad story from a father of a son, Shaiful Khas Shaharuddin who was found dead on the land slide incident..He had hoped for the best when he heard the ringing of his son’s mobile phone, but his hopes were dashed when all he saw was a hand sticking out from the rubble of his collapsed house holding the phone...He said everybody was on the top floor of his double-storey house except for his son, who was playing computer games downstairs...At about 3am, he heard his son shout ‘Why is the house moving?’ Everything else was a blur, as the house started to fall apart and collapsed....When everything came to a stop, he found his wife and relative to be safe, but he could not locate his son. So he decided to call him on his mobile phone and followed the ringing tone...He found his son buried under the rubble, with only his hand sticking out holding onto his mobile phone....The rescue team came in with saws and other equipment to extract Shaiful, but he was already dead...
What a tragic story from a father.. i just can't imagine the situation at that time.. *speechless*
Here are some factors regarding the landslide happen...

according to a senior engineer, Siraj Akbar Ali, who has 15 years of experience in the field of slope development, said the slope collapsed because of excessive water retention, probably due to poor drainage...He was commenting on the eyewitness account of some victims of the Bukit Antarabangsa landslide that there was an explosion like a bomb before the disaster happened. The drainage system in slope development is in the form of horizontal drains in which rain water flows out into the monsoon drains, rivers or streams. As a result, no water is retained in the slope's soil.
It is usually the failure of the drainage system that results in the collection of a huge amount of water in the slope soil which causes such mishaps.
Geotechnical engineers were the most qualified to ascertain the condition of soil and the type of structures to be built on slopes...The geotechnical engineer's job is to understand the changing behaviour of earth materials such as soil at the site and how these would affect the structure being built there...they will do site investigations which include the risk of natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides and rock falls to humans, property and the environment and also does porosity, permeability and soil strength tests as all these variables will determine what kind of structure can be built on the site