10 months on, flood trauma won’t ebb

Bracing for the worst: Ahmad Saffri Amishariff moving his family’s belongings to a safer place. He has a new concrete barricade as well. — RAJA FAISAL HISHAN/The Star

PETALING JAYA: It’s been almost 10 months since the great floods of last December, but for many in the Klang Valley, the trauma is still fresh.

Executive Inderjit Kaur and her family, for one, have decided to completely start afresh outside of the Taman Sri Muda area, which was the worst hit last year.

“My three children were too traumatised to continue living in our single-storey house. So my husband and I decided to rent a fully furnished three-room apartment elsewhere as a way to start anew.

“We took a fully furnished unit so we did not have to buy any household items. We had lost everything in the floods,” said the 48-year-old.

“Nothing was spared as the waters completely submerged our house. We lost our furniture, household appliances and even our car.

“It is exceptionally painful as we spent every sen we had into making that house our ‘home sweet home’ for 20 years,” she said.

Inderjit said she was at home with her husband, their three children and mother-in law on Dec 18 when the waters started to rise.

“As soon as it rose to knee-level, we decided to leave,” she said.

Many single-storey houses in Sri Muda were completely engulfed, while double-storey homes saw their lower floors destroyed.

More than 2,000 homes there were submerged by floods for five days, with 6,000 residents evacuated to temporary relief centres.

In Puchong, freelance graphic designer Julayka Junaidi, 27, said they would rush to move their cars to higher ground as soon as there was prolonged rain.

“Our three cars, a motorbike and other household items were damaged last December.”

Repair work on the vehicles and their home cost her family a substantial amount of money.

“During the second round of floods on March 7 this year, we moved my mother and younger family members to a short-term rental in Cyberjaya,” she said, adding that the downpours always left the family jittery.

“Our house is near the Klang river so we can see if the water levels rise during heavy rain.

“We get worried when the river level starts rising and we would immediately be on standby to leave,” she said.

She added that her family’s important documents were all pre-packed as a precaution.