GEORGE TOWN: Whenever Arafat Esah hears the vroom of motorcycles and cars in the middle of the night, he knows that that’s the alert for floods. The 33-year-old lives about 700m from the river and needs no other signs to tell him to brace for flood.
“We shout so our neighbours can wake up in case they are asleep. The first thing we do is to move our cars and motorcycles to higher ground,” said Arafat, who is from Kampung Masjid Shaik Eusoff off Jalan Ayer Itam, a low-lying area of the city, which tends to be the first place to flood during heavy rain.
Arafat’s house though has not been flooded in years and he was relieved to find that the flood that happened early yesterday morning was less than knee-deep.
His house is built on high posts with the underside converted into a carpark and general storage area.
“It hasn’t flooded for three years. The government launched many river deepening and widening projects after our big flood in 2017 and I think the projects were effective.
“But it was raining almost throughout Friday and Saturday,” said Arafat, who has lived there all his life and dealing with flood is ingrained in him.
In November 2017, heavy rain lasting more than 24 hours caused floodwater to rise to chin level in some parts of the neighbourhood.
On Saturday, Sungai Pinang, which flows from Ayer Itam through the densest parts of George Town, rose to 2.5m above the danger level at 9pm.
In Batu Maung, there are calls for local authorities to apologise to residents and compensate for losses due to damage from ongoing flood mitigation earthworks that may have been the cause of yesterday’s flooding in the area.
Penang MCA’s Bayan Baru coordinator Saw Yee Fung said flood victims alerted her to earthworks that had caused blockage in a 6m-wide storm drain, leaving only a 1m-wide outlet for water to flow into the nearby river.
She said it flooded in Batu Maung on Saturday, and again at 5am yesterday, adding that residents told her their homes were flooded twice in the span of a month.
“Effective flood mitigation projects should not lead to bigger problems. The state and local authorities must be held accountable. Affected residents deserve an apology and should be given compensation for property damage,” she said.
Penang environment committee chairman Phee Boon Poh confirmed that several homes were flooded in Bayan Lepas and Batu Maung on the southern part of the island as well, but levels were not high enough to call for evacuation.
“Based on the information received, most of the houses were flooded with 30cm to 50cm of water.
“By 10am (yesterday), flood waters in most of the areas had receded. We are lucky because all the pump houses in the affected areas operated smoothly,” he told Bernama yesterday.
