KAMPAR: A 13-year-old girl’s calmness in the face of adversity saved her parents’ lives when their double-storey house at Kampung Cabang Dua in Kuala Dipang, near here, sank into at least six sinkholes

Nurul Izzah Shamsuddin, who was washing clothes early yesterday morning, shouted for her parents to get out of their bedroom when she saw cracks appearing on the floor of their living room just before it caved in.

“When my parents came out of their bedroom, they fell into the sinkhole.

“My father shouted for me to throw a chair into the hole, which I did and both of them climbed up and we rushed out of the house immediately,” she said, adding that her sisters Nurul Hidayah, 14, and Nurul Atikah, 10 who were watching television on the upper floor had rushed out of the house by that time.

Nurul Izzah said the sinkholes, the biggest measuring 5m deep and 10mwide and the smallest 3m deep and 2m wide, appeared at 12.40am yesterday.

Nurul Izzah’s father Abdul Razak Shamsuddin, 44, a technician with Telekom Malaysia said he had just walked into the ground floor bedroom, where his wife Norshah Rizan Abdul Mutalib, 45, an executive officer at the Batu Gajah Hospital was asleep, when the incident happened.

“I was going to retire for the night after watching television with my daughters, when I heard cracking sounds from the floor outside my bedroom,” he added.

Abdul Razak had bruises on both his legs while his wife had cuts on her left thigh and leg and body after falling into the sinkhole.

One of their cars, the living room, a ground floor bedroom, the kitchen, a bathroom and the porch of the half wooden, half concrete house collapsed into the sinkholes.

The house is 3km away from a coconut and jackfruit orchard on former tin mining land in Kampung Kebui, Jeram, where some 45 sinkholes appeared after the undersea earthquake off Sumatra on Dec 26.

Chenderiang state assemblyman Datuk Chang Kon You who was at the scene yesterday said that a report on the incident would be submitted to Perak Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamad Tajol Rosli Ghazali.