By Ling Hui
KUCHING, March 27: Long Lama community leader Penghulu Desmond Yap was on the verge of tears when he helplessly watched a blaze engulf the shophouses in town during a severe flood back in 2021.
Having no boats or even phone reception to call for help due to total power outage in the area, his hands were tied, and all he could do was pray that it was not his mother’s house.
“That night when the fire started, I was sitting at the balcony (of my house) and I almost cried. I wondered whose house it was. It looked like my mother’s house from there.
“I could not move because I don’t have a boat, and it was impossible to walk on the streets at night (because of the flood),” he said, noting that the flood water was up to his neck when walking on Jalan Bukit Sabun, the main road leading to Long Lama town where the shophouses were.
Yap, who has been serving the area for 14 years now, said his heart churned when he heard explosions due to the fire, which ended up destroying three units of shophouses that used to be motorcycle shops.
He said the fire was eventually extinguished by the Long Lama Volunteer Fire Brigade, who had hastily loaded their boat with a water pump and spraying the fire without shirts on in the dark.
That is why, he asserted, Long Lama requires a proper fire station, among other facilities, especially when it is already a district.
“A new district must have the proper infrastructure such as a clinic, police station, and Bomba (fire station),” he told DayakDaily recently.
Touching on health facilities in Long Lama, Yap expressed his wish for the Long Lama Health Clinic to be upgraded into a hospital with better provisions.
He noted the difficulties the locals from around Ulu Baram are facing, having to travel far to hospitals in Miri only to wait in line for hours, being away from work.
“Of course, we also have to keep the youngsters in Long Lama. We need a technical school for the Form 6 school leavers, rather than them moving to towns to look for private schools and places to stay, which eventually congests the towns.
“It’s not easy living in big towns when everything requires money. Here, in the village, fishing in the river is sufficient to feed one whole family,” he added.
Meanwhile, Yap commended the Sarawak government’s effort in upgrading the logging roads in Baram, especially the new tar-sealed road from Long Lama to the Temala junction which cuts travel time to less than half an hour. — DayakDaily
