KUALA LUMPUR, June 5 — Two hostels and a resthouse on Mount Kinabalu were ruined today in Malaysia’s worst quake since 1976.
Sabah police chief Datuk Jalaluddin Abdul Rahman said the damages to buildings spread across 11 districts in Sabah.
The worst hit were on the summit of Mount Kinabalu: Hostel Panar Laban, Hostel Gunting Lagadan Hut and Resthouse Laban Rata, he said in a statement.
Tremors caused cracks on the walls of the Kota Belud bachelors’ barracks in its district police headquarters as well as its traffic division block while a bank and police barracks in Tuaran were similarly affected.
Tremors were also felt in the state capital of Kota Kinabalu, outlying Penampang, Kota Marudu, Kunak, Tenom, Papar, Kudat, Keningau all the way to Beaufort.
A 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck Sabah’s west coast at around 7.15am, causing two deaths on Mount Kinabalu and some 125 climbers believed to be stranded on the summit where temperatures can sometimes drop below freezing.
The US Geological Survey said the quake struck at a depth of 10 kilometres, with its epicentre located 19 kilometres from the town of Ranau and 54 kilometres from Kota Kinabalu.
Malaysia does experience earthquakes but is outside the Ring of Fire, a belt of seismic activity running around the basin of the Pacific Ocean that includes neighbours Indonesia and the Philippines.
