Living in fear after water tank incident

KUALA LUMPUR: Residents of an apartment here, where a 32,000 gallon water tank atop the 12-storey building burst and damaged 12 apartment units on Tuesday, are still traumatised.
Resident Ahmad Shoufi Mohd Idris, 38, who is also the apartment's management corporation treasurer, said he and his family get frightened and agitated whenever they hear a loud thud or bang following the fateful day.
"We are all really scared after what had happened. Even the sound of thunder makes me nervous now. The sound was so loud, it felt like an explosion," he told theSun.
State Housing, Building, Management and Urban Living Committee chairman Datuk Iskandar Abdul Samad, following a visit to the site, immediately approved the state's low-cost housing refurbishment scheme to have the water tank replaced.
He said the Selangor Housing and Property Board and Selangor State Development Corporation would check the site to determine the overall cost of the damage and funds required, and the state would cover 60% of it.
When asked who was supposed to be responsible for the safety checks of ageing water tanks at high-rise buildings, he said: "The respective management corporations are supposed to hire consultants every year or so to inspect if the building is safe."
Meanwhile, Ahmad Shoufi said he was lucky to still be alive after having only inspected the water tank with four other residents just five minutes before it broke and sent broken concrete slabs onto the ground.
"We received a call saying the tank was overflowing that midnight. So we shut the main stopcock and went to inspect the tank. Not more than five minutes later, I heard a loud bang and found that the tank had broken," he said.
Ahmad Shoufi said residents from two other blocks in the area have also raised concerns that the water tanks on their apartments might give way too.
Of the 12 damaged apartment units at the Pangsapuri Cheras Utama in Jalan CU 4A, Mohd Adzmi Othman's house on the 12th floor was the worst hit. Parts of his unit's wall and several of his furniture were damaged after water from the tank poured into his house knee-deep.
Checks by theSun also found that the broken concrete slabs from the apartment's wall that holds the water tank were that of light weight bricks instead of the normal bricks.