KUALA LUMPUR: Twenty years ago yesterday, Dr PG George’s life fell apart when his wife and two young daughters perished in the Highland Towers tragedy.

Wearing the same shirt he last wore when the building collapsed, he recalled leaving office that day at 1.15pm to find no home or family waiting for his return. “This shirt is the only thing I have left from that house,” he said.

Looking at the now dilapidated, bush-covered site where two other blocks still stand today, George, for a moment, could not bring himself to talk of the pain of his loss. He was one of many who visited the site yesterday to pay their respects, although there was no official memorial service planned.

“I was hoping against hope that at least one would survive. Losing one family member was bad enough … can you imagine losing all of them?” George continued.

The 72-year-old consultant obstetrician and gynecologist said Highland Towers was one of the best apartments available in Kuala Lumpur at the time. It had four rooms and a maid’s room with separate toilet and facilities included  a tennis court, swimming pool and badminton court.

A total of 48 people died in the collapse and survivors who shared that tragic memory supported each other for eight to nine years. Now, George said, everyone has moved on.

He has since remarried and now has a 14-year-old daughter.

“I still visit this place because the ‘touch’ is still there ... the memory of my family,” he said.

The site is now fenced up and padlocked. According to former residents, there was a memorial plaque with the names of fallen neighbours erected six months after the tragedy, but it went missing later.

TV host Sasha Bashir was among the luckier ones as her mother and younger sister escaped from the rubble. “A plain miracle”, she called it. The 33-year-old said she lived there until the building collapsed. She was 13 then.

“Having gone through such an experience, there is a silent understanding among us [former residents]. When we meet, we talk about our current lives and the future,” she said.

Earlier, a classmate of  Douglas Ong Tee Meng, who was among those killed in the tragedy, also came to pay his respects.

“The incident still haunts me to this day, I could have saved him. He [Douglas] was a very dear friend and I was on the phone with him about 24 hours before the incident. I remember that I had invited him over to my place but he declined because he needed to babysit his cousins,” he said.

Douglas, who was 17 then, and his three cousins did not make it out of the tower that day.

“For a well-to-do guy like him, he was very down to earth,” he said, adding that he is even considering migrating soon as the tragedy was too much for him to bear.

The classmate, who declined to be identified, also brought old newspaper clippings, photographs of them in school uniforms and a postcard to the site. “Look at this stamp, it says Dec 13, meaning he must have sent me this card days before the collapse.” he said.

The secretary of the Highland Towers Residents Committee, Chan Keng Fook, who lived in Block 2, still carries vivid images in this mind of the chaos that broke out in 1993.

“I was at work and my dad called me screaming at the top of his lungs: Come back! Get help! Block 1 collapsed! The moment I drove up to the apartment, the building was gone and I saw an Indian lady covered in white dust running away from it,” he said.

Pointing at the poster of victims’ names and photographs, Chan spoke fondly about his neighbours and how some had lost their way in life while grieving for their loved ones back then. “Six-week-old baby girl, Quah Li-Jun’s death devastated the mother because the family had tried very hard to have a child,” he recalled.

The land occupied by Highland Towers is to be sold via a tender exercise by Ambank. The property includes 50 freehold bungalow lots surrounding the site.

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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on December 12, 2013.