Floods – was it rain or bad drains?

Hazards: Fire and Rescue Department personnel help move motorcycles in the floods at Lorong Gurney, Kuala Lumpur — Bernama

THANK God for Covid-19.

I never would have thought of saying that, but I did – on Monday, when calamity hit for a second time.

The maid was down with the virus and quarantined in her room. As close contacts, both my wife and I were working from home, while the daughter was sitting for her online university exams.

And then it happened. Just two and a half months after the great floods of Dec 18, 2021, Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya and even Subang Jaya in the Klang Valley were inundated again.

Thankfully, I was at home this time and the wife and I could get some of the furniture out of the way as the 21-year-old went upstairs to continue with her exam.

I drove the car out to higher ground. It was a bumper-to-bumper crawl as everybody rushed to get their vehicles out.

Even before damaged furniture from the earlier floods could be carted away, the new furniture had been damaged. A lot of repair work has to be done again, not to mention the messy clean-up.

Hundreds – if not thousands of cars – are also waiting to be taken to workshops.

It started just after 4pm on Monday.

WhatsApp reports started coming in of cars stranded at toll plazas on the Kesas Highway, in Cheras, in Ampang, on Jalan Duta, Jalan Raja Laut and in the heart of KL city.

Hotels near the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre were seeing floods, Bukit Bintang was under water and even the SMART tunnel was unable to cope.

My sister called from Germany – she was getting images of a police car floating around near Jalan Kuchai Lama, its strobe lights flashing in the murky waters.

This is the capital of our country, our showpiece. And PJ is the biggest suburb in the country, with Subang Jaya and Shah Alam next to it. Next door to that is Klang, Selangor’s royal township.

These are not riverside kampungs. These are four major cities and a royal township.

According to the Klang MP, the township will end up being submerged by 2050 if nothing is done to save it.

This cannot be allowed to happen. The leaders just have to deliver the goods.

It’s not good enough to accept elevation to city status, collect huge amounts in assessment rates, quit rent and taxes, all while wantonly approving development of high- rises, condos and whatnots.

There has to be planning for proper drainage and flood mitigation, too.

The events of this week – KL was flooded for a second day in a row on Tuesday – go to show that the authorities have learnt nothing from last December.

All that talk about cleaning up their act was just that – talk.

And talk is cheap.

Just look at Old Klang Road, which straddles KL and PJ. There are condominiums sprouting everywhere, with little care for parking, open spaces or green lungs.

The development has reached the banks of Sungai Klang, which runs alongside. Where does the water go? Where was the drainage and flood mitigation planning?

Experts tell us that the floods were due to the cutting of green lungs, improper town planning, a lack of water retention areas, and clogged drains.

You don’t need to be an expert to know that. Any secondary schoolchild knows that. So, why don’t our city fathers?

Do they think that just doling out the odd couple of thousand ringgit in aid here and there, with cameramen in tow, is enough to keep the flood-hit families happy?

They can’t even get the flood aid right. Many victims have yet to get the full amount of aid promised after Dec 18.

The sudden flooding in urban KL and its neighbours may be due to climate change, but if that change is upon us, we have to prepare for it.

It cannot be brushed off as freak events, or “sudden heavy rainfall”.

Even now, flimsy excuses are being offered, at federal, state and local council levels.

The people in charge of the city councils, especially, have to do their jobs.

We have meteorologists to tell us what the weather is going to be like, and we have experts as town planners. It’s time they planned.

And it’s time the people decided who will do the planning.

Local council elections need to be brought back to ensure that those who sit as councillors and mayors think more of serving the people and not of lording over them.

The current appointed leaders are obviously not doing their jobs right. They should be held accountable and be ready to be ousted if they cannot deliver the goods.

The floods, after all are not something to be sneered at.

Flood damage has been estimated to cost Malaysia nearly RM915mil annually in the early 2000s, said a recently published Science Outlook 2000 report. That amount is rising faster than the floodwaters.

Malaysia also lost nearly RM8bil to environment-related disasters over the last 24 years, mostly floods – and this does not include the nearly RM950mil spent on welfare cost after such disasters.

Council elections are far cheaper, I say.