With the close cooperation of the UNITED SIKHS and Helistar Resources Sdn Bhd, a total of 2,350 kg of food supplies were delivered by helicopter to 11 Temiar settlements in the interior of Gua Musang on Saturday, 3 January 2015. This translates to about 278 Temiar families.
Some of these settlements had been cut off even before the floods at Christmas, due to landslides caused by extensive logging and rains at the onset of the monsoon period long before the floods.
The landing base for the helicopter landing and loading was at Kampung Parik 2, about 4 km inside of Kuala Betis. About 6 tonnes of aid and supplies were delivered to the collection point at Kampung Parik the day (and night) before by 3 lorries, most of it from the donations made to the Sikh Wadda Gudwara at Kampung Pandan and the Confucian School in KL.
The helicopter was piloted by Captain Bagawan Singh, the owner of Helistar Resources and an active humanitarian. Rishi aka The Flying Singh of UNITED SIKHS was the overall organiser while the local JOAS committee at Kuala Betis, with COAC, coordinated the ground logistics.
Full report to follow. Hopefully.
CN-COAC | 4 January 2015
Aid being brought from the nearby collection point to the landing site.
Each flight could take about 500 kg of food and supplies, plus the pilot and two passengers (usually Rishi and his video guy, Dev).
Unloading and sorting according to village allotments.
The location of the drop is then decided upon by the community and GPS coordinates given to the captain.
Then off to the designated settlement in the Pos Gob, Pos Belatim and Pos Bihai areas.
I was given the opportunity to go on two of the sorties.
After circling the village a couple of times, the Temiar below knew we were going to land at their landing site.
The supplies were quickly offloaded. No more than 15 minutes at each stop, unless some extended interviews were to be conducted for UNITED SIKHS.
Captain Bagawan overseeing the unloading of the supplies.
Then we returned to base for re-loading. This was done 6 times.
Then off to another location, according to GPS coordinates
This is an actual helicopter landing pad, with interlaced bamboo as a based for the landing zone. But it has obviously not been used for along time.
Temiars happy that some of their kin have been reached. But there are still many more settlements inland not reached by us, or anybody for a few weeks, if not months.
Then we were off to Raub for another refuelling, and back to Subang airport. Total helicopter time used: 11 hours.