It has been reported that SMART (Special Malaysian Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team) had moved into action for the first time since the elite team had been formed after the Highland Towers collapse tragedy in Kuala Lumpur in December 1994.
Twenty-four members of SMART joined in the massive search-and-rescue operation launched yesterday at 5 a.m. in Keningau which was the worst affected area when the tropical storm Greg battered the west coast of Sabah, killing at least 119 people, with more than 200 reported missing, and causing millions of ringgit of damage to property.
However, when SMART swung into operation to take part in the search-and-rescue operation, it was some 50 hours after the tropical storm Greg hit Sabah around midnight on Christmas Eve, which ravaged for some five hours until about 5 a.m. on Christmas Day on Wednesday.
During the most crucial and critical 42 hours of the ravages and aftermath of the tropical storm Greg, SMART was merely on “stand-by alert” in Kuala Lumpur to “assess the situation” whether its services were needed, when the SMART members should have been in Sabah even before Greg hit the state in view of the 60 hours’ notice the Meteorological Services Department had about the tropical storm heading towards Sabah.
The tardiness in action of SMART is most disappointing, and SMART must be reminded that its priority should be to search and rescue the living, and not the dead - to be at the scene of any disaster at the first possible time, and not after some 50 hours later!
There is clearly an urgent need for all the relevant authorities concerned, apart from SMART, to learn from the lessons of the ravages of the tropical storm Greg - such as the Meteorological Services Department, the Ministry of Information and the Sabah State Government.
There could be no doubt that if sufficient warnings had been given to the public alerting them to the severity of the tropical storm Greg and precautionary measures had been taken by the authorities and the people, the loss of human lives and destruction to property would have been considerably minimised. Although it would not be possible to completely avoid deaths from the ravages of the tropical storm Greg, the death toll would not have reached such a high figure of 119 with more than 200 missing - but be a mere small percentage of the present figures.
The Minister for Information, Datuk Mohamed Rahmat, who is also the National Disaster Relief Comittee chairman, has called for a more effective early-warning system to minimise the loss of lives and property in the event of a weather-related incident like the tropical storm Greg, but he should realise that the ravages of Greg had also been contributed by the failures of the Ministry of Information, in particular the RTM in informing the people in outlying areas in Sabah about the impending tropical storm.
There should be a full inquiry as to why the authorities concerned had not been able to make full and proper use of the 60 hours’ notice about the impending tropical storm Greg to mobilise the various government agencies and the people to prepare for a natural disaster.
For instance, the Sabah Chief Minister, Datuk Yong Teck Lee only ordered the Sabah Natural Disaster Committee and district committees to be activated after Greg had done its worst on Christmas Day, when such directive should have been issued before Greg hit Sabah - as the Meteorological Services Department director-general Dr. Lim Joo Tick had said that his department had detected that Greg was moving to the northwest coast of Sabah and Sarawak on Monday, 23rd December, and that at noon on the same day, the alert was relayed to its branches in Sabah and Sarawak.
The director of the weather forecast division of the Meteorological Services Department, Hwang Yung Fong, had also said yesterday that the department had anticipated the presence of strong winds and very rough seas on that day as it had received charts from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast indicating that there will be very strong winds moving at 72kph on December 24.
The full inquiry into why the various authorities concerned had not been able to make full and proper use of the 60 hours’ notice of the impending tropical storm Greg hitting Sabah is not to look for scapegoats or chop heads, but to ensure that after paying such a heavy price in Sabah on Christmas, Malaysians would not be caught off-guard again by another tropical storm in the age of satellite photographs which could forecast weather trends several days in advance.
(28/12/96)