YAHYA Ali, one of six firefighters who drowned while searching for a missing teenager in a disused mining pond in Selangor yesterday, is on his final journey home.

The remains of the 24-year-old firefighter was being repatriated back to Sarawak on a Royal Malaysian Air Force CN235 transport plane for the first leg of the journey.

According to the Sarawak Fire and Rescue Department, the “Bodevac” (body evacuation) flight took off from Subang about 2pm and was expected to arrive in Sibu later this evening.

From Sibu, Yahya’s body will be transported by the department’s Russian-made MiL 17 helicopter to the village of Tian in Igan, his coastal home town in Mukah.

While the journey is a mere 61km by air, it would be 206km by road.

Yahya’s family members, friends and colleagues in the Sibu Fire and Rescue Department had already gathered at Sibu airport, according to WhatsApp group chats.

Yahya and the five other divers – four from the Port Klang station, Yahya’s base, and two from the Shah Alam station – were part of a search-and-rescue operation for a 17-year-old who fell into a mining pond at Taman Putra Perdana, Puchong, where he had gone fishing with his friends.

The tragedy, which recorded the highest number of men ever to be killed during an operation in the department’s history, had even inspired the son of a former firefighter to write a poem in tribute to the dead men.

The first few lines of Akhtar Syamir Nor Azman’s poem, Unsung Heroes, read:

“Spoken of only when they are a topic,
Called only when needed,
Appreciated only when an incident happened,
Forgotten when everything is fine.”

Sarawak PKR Youth, meanwhile, called on Putrajaya to “recognise the sacrifice” of the firefighters by declaring them heroes, “just like how we declare our soldiers and policemen who make the final sacrifice (heroes)”.

The search-and-rescue operation for the missing teen resumed at 2pm today after heavy rain resulted in a two-hour delay. – October 4, 2018.