KOTA KINABALU: Kerosakan pada komponon ‘Float Valve’ tangki air simpanan sistem pencegah kebakaran menjadi punca berlakunya insiden limpahan air di Menara Kinabalu semalam.

Menurut Pengarah Jabatan Kerja Raya (JKR) Sabah, Philemon Lajawai, keadaan itu mengakibatkan aras 11 di Blok A dibanjiri takungan air dalam kejadian jam 12.25 tengah hari.

“Kerja-kerja pembersihan selesai dilakukan pada 11.30 malam Rabu (30 April),” katanya dalam satu kenyataan hari ini.

Ujarnya lagi, keadaan takungan air bertambah buruk apabila pihak syarikat pengurusan fasiliti dikatakan lewat melakukan penutupan pam air.

Situasi itu telah menyebabkan takungan air turut melimpah bermula dari aras 11 hingga 7.

Kegagalan komponen tersebut menyebabkan kira-kira 34,000 liter air telah dipam secara berterusan dalam tempoh 45 minit.

“Sebagai langkah keselamatan, pemeriksaan, penyelenggaraan dan bagi mengurangkan risiko kerosakan pada sistem lif, sistem pengoperasian lif (lapan lif) telah ditutup serta-merta semasa kejadian.

“Operasi satu lif petugas telah disahkan selamat pada 6 petang semalam, manakala satu lif kargo tidak terkesan insiden dan masih berfungsi seperti biasa,” katanya lagi.

Dalam pada itu, Jabatan Kerja Raya Negeri Sabah akan melakukan penelitian secara terperinci berhubung insiden itu termasuk faktor kecuaian bagi mengelakkan insiden sama tidak berulang.

KOTA KINABALU: Clearing work is ongoing at a section of the Sepulot–Pagalungan road in Nabawan that was hit by a landslide, but continuous rain has triggered another landslide, delaying the full recovery of the route.

The affected stretch, which connects Pekan Sepulot and Pekan Pagalungan, remains impassable to all types of vehicles.

“The latest update is as posted on the department’s Facebook page. The department’s contractor is currently continuing with the clearing operations. The estimated time required to reopen the road is approximately three days, pending weather conditions.

“There is an alternative route, but it passes through the Jawarla Forest Reserve and requires permission from Jawarla, the forest concessionaire,” he said when contacted on Thursday (May 1).

The department attributed the landslide to continuous rainfall and has erected warning signs at the site, with monitoring being carried out by the appointed contractor.

KOTA BHARU: The Wakaf Bunut Water Treatment Plant (WTP) in Pasir Puteh has resumed operations after a temporary shutdown triggered by suspected contamination in Sungai Rasau, believed to have originated from a nearby fish farm.

Kelantan Public Works, Infrastructure, Water and Rural Development Committee chairman Datuk Dr Izani Husin said that lab tests confirmed the river was safe, enabling the plant to reopen.

“Water samples were tested over the past week and the results cleared the way for operations to resume,” he told reporters after launching a fundraiser for eight families affected by a house fire in Kampung Kijang.

On April 11, Air Kelantan Sdn Bhd (AKSB) temporarily halted operations at the WTP due to a drop in raw water quality at the plant’s intake point, suspected to have been caused by toxins from a nearby fish farm.

Of the 4,800 kilometres (km) of inspected pipelines, many were found to be damaged or blocked, he added.

“We’re replacing 3,200 km of old pipes, but it’s a time-consuming task. At current capacity, only 150 km can be done annually. More leak detection teams are urgently needed,” he said.

SEOUL, May 1 — Human-induced climate change made the ultra-dry and warm conditions that fanned South Korea’s deadliest wildfires in history this March twice as likely and more intense, researchers said Thursday.

Vast swaths of the country’s south-east were burned in a series of blazes in March, which killed 31 people and destroyed historic sites, including a some thousand-year-old temple site.

The affected area had been experiencing below-average rainfall for months and was then hit by strong winds, local officials said, following South Korea’s hottest year on record in 2024.

The hot, dry and windy conditions that fed the flames were “twice as likely and about 15 per cent more intense” due to human-caused climate change, said World Weather Attribution, a scientific network that studies the influence of global warming on extreme weather.

“South Korea’s deadliest wildfires were made much more likely by climate change,” said Clair Barnes, a WWA researcher from the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London.

Officials said at the time that the conditions made it very hard for conventional firefighting methods to control the blazes, which leapt from pine tree to pine tree across dried-out hillsides.

“These unprecedented conditions exposed the limits of even well-developed suppression systems,” WWA said in a report of its findings. “With fires increasingly likely to exceed control capacity, the emphasis must shift toward proactive risk reduction,” it added.

More than 62 per cent of South Korea is covered in forest, the report said, with dense tree cover especially prominent along the eastern coast and in mountainous regions, landscapes that significantly influence how wildfires spread.

Around 11 per cent of South Korea’s forested areas border human settlements, the study said. “These areas are particularly susceptible to ignition and have accounted for nearly 30 per cent of wildfires recorded between 2016 and 2022.”

The researchers’ findings were most conclusive regarding the increased likelihood of fire weather — which is measured by the Hot-Dry-Windy Index (HDWI) — and higher maximum temperatures.

But they found no attributable link between climate change and rainfall levels during the period surrounding the fires.

Fires rage

South Korea has few energy resources of its own and relies on imported coal — a cheap but dirty fuel — for around a third of the electricity powering it, according to figures from the International Energy Agency.

The inferno in March also laid bare the country’s demographic crisis and regional disparities, as rural areas are both underpopulated and disproportionately home to senior citizens.

Many of the dead were seniors, and experts have warned that it will be hard for people to rebuild their lives in the burn zone. In the weeks and months since, South Korea has recorded a string of wildfires.

In April, helicopters were deployed to contain a wildfire within the DMZ, the buffer zone separating the South from nuclear-armed North Korea.

This week, more than 2,000 people were forced to evacuate after wildfires occurred in parts of the south-eastern city of Daegu, after a blaze broke out on Mount Hamji in the region.

WWA is a pioneer in attribution science, which uses peer-reviewed methods to quickly assess the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events.

This allows a comparison of observations from today’s climate, with some 1.3°Celsius of warming, against computer simulations that consider the climate before humanity started burning fossil fuels in the 1800s. — AFP