Mountain guides helped 167 climbers to safety after a powerful earthquake stranded them atop one of Southeast Asia’s tallest peaks, according to the official Twitter account of the Malaysia Fire and Rescue Department.
Two bodies have been recovered from Mount Kinabalu and 16 climbers remain missing, the fire and rescue department said.
The magnitude-6.0 quake struck early Friday, damaging several buildings in Ranau — the epicenter, the Bernama news agency said.
Videos and social media purportedly taken from the base of the mountain appeared to show large rock slides enveloping the peak after the tremor and people anxiously looking for shelter.
Masidi Manjun, the tourism minister for the state of Sabah, said guides helped the climbers down the mountain, adding that the groups would be taken to the Laban Rata rest house down the slopes, where food was being brought in.
Helicopters had difficulty reaching the climbers on the mountain peak due to bad weather, said Jamili Nais, Sabah Parks director.
Damage to the hospital in Ranau also hampered rescue efforts, he said.
‘Thank God, we are safe’
Nurul Hani Ideris, 29, was on the mountain peak with a group of climbers and tour guides when the quake struck, blocking off trails and stranding them. “All the paths vanished,” she told CNN over WhatsApp.
Shivering in near-freezing temperatures, they waited all day for a helicopter rescue that never came. But then a team of 75 more guides from the park arrived to help them escape, she said.
They managed to reach safety after a grueling 10-hour hike through debris that lasted into the middle of the night, sharing what little food and water they had and passing by what appeared to be dead bodies.
A helicopter spotted them and threw two boxes of supplies, but they fell off a gorge.
“We were exhausted, starving at the same time… it was very difficult,” she said.
Still, the mountain guides “seemed to know every single part of the place,” and managed to carve a route through the devastated landscape, cutting branches and tying ropes to create a new path.
It was nearly 2am when they reached Kundasang, a town near the mountain’s southern base.
Only as they neared the base did they see the fire brigade and later the army.
Ideris said climbers were “very disappointed” with the government.
“No one came to save us,” she said. If it hadn’t been for the mountain guides, “We would be freezing to death.”
Calls to Malaysia’s tourism ministry and rescue department were not immediately answered Saturday morning.
Social media reacts
Many who felt the quake in the Sabah area took to Twitter to share their experiences.
One, who gave her name only as Eliana, said: “I have to say… I’m Colombian, many earthquakes in my life, the one this morning in Kinabalu Park was one of the worse.”
Another Twitter user, Abex, posted she “felt it very strong” from Kundasang, near to Mount Kinabalu. “Lucky I just finished the trekking last night,” she said.
At 4,095 meters (13,435 feet) above sea level, Kinabalu is one of the highest mountains in Southeast Asia. The UNESCO-listed Mount Kinabalu National Park is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the state of Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo, with visitors forced to book two to three months in advance to secure one of 196 daily allocated hiking permits.