Sunday 24 December 2006

The starting line

I had always wanted to jump on this blogging band wagon. Tried it on Yahoo 360 and kinda liked it. What I hope to achieve? Well, hopefully I can share with you an insight into my life.


I just came back from 4 days flood disaster operation in Melaka. The call came at 0900hrs and I had slept at 0600hrs that morning because of 'Rukun Tetangga' duty here in my area. Our counterpart in Melaka had asked for assistance from us. By 1600hrs we were there in Melaka with 1 Land Rover, 1 Boat and 1 Hicom Handalan...plus 11 'team members'.

The team from left....KAZ, Azzat, Zai, Yazid, Arif, Faisal, Mail, Shahir, Amal and Sham.


What we saw was the human race adapting to a disaster...learning how to cope with the stress of loosing something valuable. There are those who completely ignore the calls for them to vacate their homes as the water level was rising. Some even turned aggrasive when asked to leave. These people think that they know everything. Yes, we sympathise that they lost something during the flood. What they didnt realised was that by doing so, and when the water level 'do rise' higher than they dared, they started calling us for help again.

So the time spent to 're-do' the rescue work should or could have
been
spent rescuing other people.

Sometimes we have to deploy the whole team to rescue 1 or 2 persons. The work is still the same....reach location, detach boat, row the boat to victim's location, rescue and re-load boat onto trailer.

Don't get me wrong, we are there for the people in need. We worked until the wee hours for them. Anytime, anyplace, anyone. But next time if you are ever in a disaster situation and the authorities asked you to leave, just leave, as they are in a better position to assess your situation.

So, that's all for now. I shall update this blog...when the urge to write overwhelms the urge to relax.

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