Nearly three years after a devastating landslide forced the shutdown of Sabah’s largest hydroelectric station, workers who survived the incident are recounting the night they feared they wouldn’t make it out alive.

On October 31, 2022, the Tenom Pangi Hydroelectric Station—Sabah’s 66-megawatt power producer—was hit by a massive landslide that buried parts of the facility and cut electricity to thousands. 

Heavy rain had been falling for hours when, according to survivors, the hillside suddenly gave way.

“We thought we were done for,” said Ailey Jamal, a veteran of more than three decades at the plant, who was on duty that night.

Ailey and a colleague were trapped in a guard post nearly buried by mud and debris. 

The two were eventually pulled out by Petrus A. Joanis, another long-serving employee who had risked his life to reach them in the dark.

“I nearly turned back. But I heard them shouting my name,” Petrus recalled.

The floodwaters did not spare the control room. Shift supervisor Mohd Raffi Yahya described seeing two floors of the station submerged.

“It was more than just rain. It was like the whole hill collapsed on us,” Raffi said.

The team, with communications down and roads cut off, walked four kilometres through wreckage to reach safety the following morning.

While no lives were lost, the station was crippled, leaving Sabah’s already fragile energy system under pressure for months.

Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB), in a briefing after the incident, linked the disaster to logging and land clearing activities upstream, believed to have taken place in the Tenom Forest Reserve.

Kemabong assemblyman Rubin Balang, whose constituency covers the disaster site, has noted that erosion caused by those activities was the likely trigger.

“There were upstream logging activities and possibly land expansion disturbances, which may have caused erosion and the resulting mud floods,” SESB officials told state leaders.

Rubin urged the government to verify whether these activities had received proper approvals and to consider measures to prevent future incidents.

Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Shahelmey Yahya said the state would work with SESB and the district office to determine who holds the authority to manage slope stability at the site.

“We will discuss with Sabah Electricity and the District Office to see who is responsible for monitoring or managing the slope in this area,” Shahelmey said.

No findings on the legality of the logging activities have been made public to date.

Two years later, operations at the dam have resumed, with SESB installing additional monitoring equipment, drones, and early warning systems.

However, the workers say the emotional scars remain.

“You can fix the station. But fear like that doesn’t go away so easily,”

Ailey said.

Raffi, who led his team through the mud that night, said he still gets anxious when heavy rain falls.

“We all remember what happened. You don’t forget something like that,” he added.

The memory of that night still hangs over those who lived it, even as the state begins to move on.

“We survived,” Petrus said.

“We just hope nothing like it ever happens again.” – May 17, 2025