An engineer today admitted that he had not followed certain codes in the design and construction of Menara Umno and said he had his own reasons for deviating, the Commission of Inquiry (CI) into the Menara Umno incident in Penang heard today.
Lee Ah Yew (pic) told the CI that he had drawn up the plans for the building and deviated from some of the codes before applying his own calculations.
He insisted that his deviation could not be the cause of the collapse of the lightning arrestor and concrete mast from the top of the 21-storey building.
Lee admitted that he had not followed certain codes in BS 8110, a British standard for the design and construction of reinforced and pre-stressed concrete structures.
He told the CI that he would still deviate from the codes even if the Menara Umno owner wanted him to rebuild the structure as it was.
"But because of what has happened, I would defer the re-building until I had found the cause of the collapse," Lee told CI chairman Datuk Yeo Yang Poh, who asked him whether he would still deviate from the code today.
Datuk Dr Gue See See and Professor Roslan Hashim, who are both engineers and members of the CI, asked Lee why he had deviated from the code when he had no experience in building such a structure.
"Do you think it was a wise move to deviate from the code? Can you reconcile and explain your actions," Roslan asked Lee.
Yeo told Lee that as he was not a professional engineer when he drew the plans for Menara Umno in the 1990s, he should have followed the code.
"The structure collapsed and killed two people. It failed, and you have not given us a different cause for the failure but you insist that you would do it all over again if asked to," Yeo asked Lee.
The latter then clarified he would only repeat his actions if the original design was not a contributing factor in the collapse.
Conducting officer N. Mureli told Lee that chances were the collapse might not have occurred if he had followed the code and advised him to change his stand. Mureli told Lee that there was a chance the latter may have been wrong.
When told an average man would come to the reasonable conclusion that one of the causes of the collapse was due to codes not being observed, Lee argued there were other contributing factors including material quality, construction methods and the wrong basic wind speed.
Earlier, the CI heard from two elected representatives that politicians had interfered with the emergency relief operations following the incident on June 13. Komtar assemblyman Teh Lai Heng said no instructions were given to the police, firemen or any uniformed personnel from politicians.
When Mureli pointed out that there had been rumours that an elected representative had interfered and given orders to emergency services, Teh said he had merely asked the police to keep the public away from the scene of the incident.
In the June 13 Menara Umno incident, the collapse of the lightning arrestor along with concrete debris during a freak storm killed lorry driver Jahir Hussain Sulaiman, 46, and hawker Lim Chin Aik, 44. Both men were driving along the road.
While Jahir's body was found at the scene, Lim's remains are still missing until today. Closed circuit television recordings later showed that the concrete mast fell directly onto the car he was driving and buried all traces of the vehicle. - November 10, 2013.
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