A decade after the Mount Kinabalu earthquake, survivors return to climb again

A decade ago a 6.0 quake struck Mount Kinabalu, killing 18, including students and teachers from Singapore’s Tanjong Katong Primary. A decade later, survivors return to the mountain to confront what memory left behind.

Hong Kong (CNN) — Dangling from a tree for nearly seven hours, 11-year-old Prajesh Dhimant Patel was barely conscious — only the faint, slow movement of his feet, clad in bright orange shoes, hinted at a trace of life.

Amid the debris of crushed boulders unleashed by a devastating earthquake, a tour guide was descending the mountain when, from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of those bright shoes.

It was that flash of orange that led the guide to Patel, and ultimately, saved the schoolboy’s life.

It’s been 10 years since the tragic morning of June 5, 2015, when 29 students and eight teachers from Singapore’s Tanjong Katong Primary School set off on what was meant to be a memorable school expedition to climb the 13,435 feet Mount Kinabalu on the island of Borneo, Malaysia.

As the group ascended, a 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck, triggering a landslide that buried part of the expedition.

Patel was swept away by the thundering cascade of rocks and dirt and hoisted into a tree.

Seven students and two teachers from his group never made it back. Eighteen people in total lost their lives.

For Patel, now 21, the memories are blurred by trauma and lost to time, much like the friends and teachers he lost that day. But on the 10th anniversary of the tragedy, he felt ready to revisit that chapter of his life.

“I had always wanted to know what had happened, because nobody shared it with me,” he said.

Joined by his former classmate and fellow survivor, Emyr Uzayr, Patel began the journey to retrace the very trails that once tested their limits — and to heal.

The reunion

When Patel and Uzayr reunited for the climb on May 20 this year, they were ready — despite lingering anxiety and fear — to honor the friends who never came home.

The two had stayed in a vague sort of touch after the 2015 disaster, little more than brief hellos on Instagram and scattered “how are you” messages.

Despite barely speaking over the years, one thing was clear for both of them: returning to Mount Kinabalu was unfinished business. They were both eager to return and shake off the ghosts on the 10th anniversary of the earthquake.

On the climb, they reunited with Cornelius Sanan, the 43-year-old Malaysian mountain guide who, 10 years earlier, had saved Patel’s life.

Sanan told CNN that the first thing he said to Patel was, “Where are your magic shoes?”

“I wish I still had them,” Patel replied, “but they held too many painful memories, so my parents didn’t want me to keep them.”

Though the bright orange shoes were long gone, Patel wore a familiar religious pendant around his neck — his lucky charm, which Sanan recognized. It was the same pendant Patel had worn on the day of the quake.

The group hoped to complete the climb in two days. But in the early hours of May 21, heavy rain began to fall, forcing them to spend an extra day on the mountain.

What could have been a frustrating delay turned into an opportunity to listen to the stories of the locals who still remembered that tragic day, and to hear from Sanan himself.

“It became more of a shared journey than a personal one,” Uzayr reflected.

The next morning, at 3:30 a.m., just as the rain eased, they resumed their climb through the steep, soggy terrain of Mount Kinabalu.

“It was physically very tough,” Uzayr admitted. “At some point, I wondered — how did we even manage this when we were just kids?”

Under clear skies and with fresh mountain air all around, as Uzayr climbed, the old memories surged back.

“Every step we took,” the 21-year-old recalled, “memories of our friends came flooding back.”

The recollection

Unlike Patel, Uzayr remembers everything from that fateful day which began with laughter, the thrill of a long-awaited school trip finally coming to life.

“We were just kids, telling each other, ‘Hurry up! Move faster!’” he recalled with a soft smile.

The day had only just begun when the ground began to tremble.

“The whole mountain shook,” he said. “And then, thousands of rocks — some the size of car tires — came crashing down from above at very fast, fast speed.”

Teachers shouted, “Get down! Get down!”

But the rocks fell faster than anyone could react to.

“I remember the colors of my friends’ jackets everywhere,” he said quietly, “and then… the bodies.”

Uzayr was left covered in cuts, with a fractured skull. But he made it out alive.

For Patel, though; the memories are mostly lost and scattered. It is Sanan, the mountain guide who found him, who now helps fill in the blanks.

He shows Patel the exact tree where he had been found, dangling for hours — barely visible.

“We saw a bit of movement and thought, ‘maybe someone is still alive’,” Sanan told CNN. “We made the decision to bring Patel up without any proper gear. We just had to try.”

“If I had landed just a few meters to the left or right,” Patel said, “they wouldn’t have been able to see me. The trees would’ve hidden me completely.”

He was severely injured, physically and emotionally.

“I completely couldn’t speak, couldn’t walk, couldn’t write,” he recalled, “so I had to relearn how to do every basic thing from the start.”

And yet, the man who pulled Patel from the trees wasn’t trained in rescue at all. Sanan had only been a mountain guide for five years, with no prior experience in a natural disaster. But on that day, instinct took over.

Sanan lost someone too — his cousin Robbie Sapinggi, a fellow guide who had been leading a Thai tourist when the earthquake hit. Sapinggi was caught under falling rocks. Knowing he wouldn’t make it, he told the tourist to go on without him. Another mountain guide, Joseph Soludin, also lost his life that day.

Sanan still guides today. It’s his way of honoring Sapinggi’s memory.

“I continue guiding,” he said, “because part of my soul lives here (in Mount Kinabalu).”

To Uzayr and Patel, Sanan will always be their hero — the man who saved lives.

But Sanan shakes his head.

“We were all there that day — guides, rescuers, everyone. No one did it alone,” he said softly. “We were all heroes, in our own way.”

A decade on

The trails on Mount Kinabalu have since been rebuilt. A dedicated rescue team now stands ready every day.

Safety has changed, but the mountain hasn’t. High up in those peaks, the memories of 2015 still live on.

“In everything we do now, we carry their memories,” Uzayr said. “We honored what our friends never got the chance to finish.”

And sometimes, when the weight of memory grows heavy, they think of the little things.

Like the bright orange shoes caught in a tree — proof that life clings on, even in the darkest moments.

“We found a renewed sense of purpose,” Uzayr said. “And realized it was time to accept the past and move on to the future.”

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