12. DBKL: 60m retaining wall highest in city

Monday December 31, 2012

KUALA LUMPUR: The retaining wall in Bukit Setiawangsa is the highest of such walls in the city.

Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) Public Works and Drainage Department director Tan Keng Chok said based on the current guidelines, the wall was way too high and would not have been allowed now.

He said the guidelines only allowed such a wall to go as high as 36m. Anything above that would be deemed dangerous.

The Setiawangsa wall spans 60m and is the highest ever built in the city. That's why the road was named Puncak Setiawangsa, as it was named to reflect the peak of a mountain, he said yesterday.

Asked if lack of maintenance was one of the causes of the collapse, Tan said: Today's guidelines require stringent and periodic maintenance programmes. Ikram (Public Works Institute of Malaysia) is still in the process of finding out what had caused the wall to collapse and we will not speculate, he said.

Tan said his department was trying to identify other areas with similar walls which may be at risk.

He added that the only other shotcrete-type walls in the city were located in Sri Hartamas and Taman Esplanade in Bukit Jalil.

Both are relatively low and are not a cause for concern. The others are mostly reinforced concrete and reinforced earth walls.

In the past, we didn't have a record of where these walls were. It is the developer that builds and maintains them for life. But after this latest incident, City Hall will be keeping a closer eye on them, he added.

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12. DBKL: 60m retaining wall highest in city