THE Highland Towers apartments collapsed some two decades ago because the land they were built on was prone to shifting, slips triggered by very heavy rains subverting the stability of foundations. That tragedy, which took the lives of 48 people on Dec 11, 1993, is still fresh in public recall. Then, in 2008, not too far away, the Bukit Antarabangsa landslide occurred, leaving an apartment tower perched precariously close to the edge of a steep slope. Its development was a fundamental contributor to the catastrophe which befell the former. While fatalities were much less this time, there was an obvious lack, on the part of developers, to take into account the ability of the site to support their buildings. The recent announcement of the Kuala Lumpur Slope Information System (KuLSIS) developed by the Kuala Lumpur City Hall together with the Public Works Institute of Malaysia (Ikram) then is much welcomed. It identifies weak slopes. According to the mayor, the system has paid off and work on weak slopes have begun, prioritised according to urgency.
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