Taman Sri Muda residents prepare to evacuate as flood siren sounds again

After the flood alert siren sounded in Taman Sri Muda at 6pm on Tuesday (Nov 8) evening, Thilagawathy Maniam, 45, was ready to leave home with her emergency evacuation kit, husband and three children.

The bag containing important certificates, documents, money, change of clothes and essentials has been packed since March this year, and this time she wasn’t going to guesstimate the seriousness of the situation as she did almost a year ago.

“We lost two cars because we were slow to act, thinking the water would come up to the doorstep and recede as usual after a couple of hours.

“But it started rising too quickly for us to drive out,” said Thilagawathy, recalling the day she lost all her possessions accumulated over the 22 years she and her family lived there.

Today, Thilagawathy said, all her neighbours have an emergency evacuation kit.

Dec 18 will be the first anniversary of an unprecedented flood crisis that hit the nation and Taman Sri Muda was one of the last places to become inundated and up to about 3m in flood waters in some places which didn’t recede for days.

Thilagawathy and her family were among 32,044 people who were placed in 162 PPS across nine districts in Selangor but it was a jammed sluice gate in Taman Sri Muda that made the wait to return home longer.

The two-hour downpour from 3pm on Tuesday broke a section of the ceiling in the porch of her area and rainwater poured through the roof.

“We were ready to leave until there were Facebook videos showing us that the sluice gate was functioning,” she said, adding that it will be restless nights from now on.

Selangor’s RM7 million Klang river dredging will help

The state explained that debris from flood waters had damaged the gate causing it to jam but the two-day wait for the problem to be resolved also left houses soaking in dirty flood waters for that duration.

Kota Kemuning assemblyperson V Ganabatirau told Malaysiakini while the bund that broke in March was fully upgraded by August, “the pump house upgrade to manage the high volume of water should be ready by mid-next year”.

The assemblyperson who is contesting in the current 15th general election (GE15) for the Klang parliament seat said the state had also commenced a five-year project with a budget of RM7 million, to deepen and widen the Klang river.

He said the dredging project is from where the monsoon drain in Taman Sri Muda meets Klang river and ends at the river mouth in Port Klang but to prevent the flood mitigative project from backfiring, operations started on both ends simultaneously on Nov 1.

“If we started from inland first, the water may collect in areas already dredged because parts of the river closer to the river mouth are shallower,” he explained.

However, Ganabatirau who has been a Taman Sri Muda resident for 28 years until 2019 could not give any assurance that the township would not flood again but was certain the river dredging would ease the situation for residents there and in Klang.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Shah Alam district police opened the multi-storey car park at Sri Muda Modern Market in Section 25 for the public to move their cars there to protect against damage from flood waters.

Reluctant to return but reluctant to leave

A weather-beaten banner hangs in Bulatan Aman (roundabout) offering those whose cars were inundated in flood waters assistance in selling their cars.

The banner is a depressing reminder of a crisis that claimed life and property as Selangor’s 25 deaths were the highest in the country.

S Ruben, 28, whose house is on Jalan Muhibah facing the monsoon drain that receives all the water from Taman Sri Muda and Batu 8 Shah Alam to meet the Klang river controlled by a sluice gate, said he could not return home for the first six months after the floods.

“After washing the house and throwing away all our belongings, my mother and I lived with relatives in Klang for six months to recover from this tragedy,” said Ruben, whose landlord waived a one-month rental.

Having painted his house a shade of cobalt and bought a second-hand car in a different shade of cobalt, Ruben was a little more upbeat when met by Malaysiakini.

He confessed that he was never going to leave the township, despite the sinking feeling that crept up when the monsoon drain was brimming with water on Tuesday night.

“Taman Sri Muda has all the shops and everything you need. We don’t have to leave. In fact, people from neighbouring Kota Kemuning and Alam Mega come here to shop.

“It’s central and easily accessible to other parts of the Klang Valley from the Kesas Expressway on one side and the Federal Highway on the other side,” said the renter who is planning to buy a house there.

However, Ruben admits that there were many who moved out and some who abandoned their houses without even clearing out all their damaged belongings.

“It took a long time to clean stains and that sandy texture from the walls.

“We waited for the smell to fade but painting the walls was not easy because the paint kept peeling off,” he said, remembering a lingering smell and the effects of long-term dampness.

Meanwhile, there were many houses undergoing renovation as well and a new commercial complex is being erected in the centre of town.

Flooding unresolved because it’s a blame game

Eleven months have passed since flood waters ravaged Taman Sri Muda yet damaged infrastructure remains unchanged and struggling businesses only now start to see an upturn.

All the narrow drains that lead water out from Bulatan Aman are either broken and appear to have been torn open by a strong force (such as strong water currents) or clogged by sand and impassable.

Kota Raja parliamentary candidate under the BN banner, D Kajendran, said the flooding situation in Klang and Shah Alam remained unresolved because it was a blame game.

“When I speak to Ganabatirau, he blames the Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID).

“When I speak to the department, they blame the Shah Alam City Council.

“When BN wins the federal and the state government, we will resolve the problem,” promised Kajendran, a first-time candidate who was born in the constituency, studied, and started a freight forwarding business there.

Kajendran said that for the past 15 years under Pakatan Harapan, the issue was never resolved.

He admitted to meeting Ganabatirau during the December floods to help manage the situation and explained that it was not about managing the garbage collection but also about educating the public to not litter.

“Similarly, managing the large monsoon drains does not fall on DID alone but also on the local councils.

“So, it’s a concerted effort and we will find a solution for flash floods,” he assured.

In the 2018 election, Harapan was challenged by PAS and BN’s MIC candidate for the Kota Raja seat. Amanah, which is a component party of the Harapan coalition, won with a 71,000-vote margin.

Voters in Taman Sri Muda will fall under the Sri Muda 1 and Sri Muda 2 Selatan polling districts. Amanah secured more than 75 percent of the votes in both polling districts.

Businesses avoided

Business operators in Taman Sri Muda town centre and those located within the housing area all said they were ignored by all those offering help.

“We were not offered any kind of assistance and not even asked if we were okay,” said Deivanai Ratnam, 48, who runs an Indian apparel shop.

By late Tuesday evening, she had all her material and clothes moved upstairs in the shop lot and had one staff member on standby.

“We had to move everything down the next morning, but I didn’t want to take the risk,” said Deivanai, whose losses last December reached RM190,000.

She also said that the drainage infrastructure has not been upgraded but the construction of a new commercial building was almost completed.

"Drains have never been cleaned and there is no proper rubbish bin provided by the council, so businesses throw their rubbish on the ground in one spot.

Unlike Deivanai, sewing machine seller Lew See Lei and Ricky, who does glass panelling and windows, said they did not take stock as it was too painful to count.

“I estimate the loss to be more than RM100,000,” she said, explaining that the only precaution she could take was to leave her new machines on the first floor while the second-hand machines remained on the ground floor.

This was because carrying the heavy machines up and down was not an option.

At least 50 sewing machines that were damaged during the December floods crowd one portion of the ground floor and Lew said the machines were supposed to be repaired and sold as second-hand machines.

Insurance was also not an option as not many wanted to offer them coverage and those who did were too expensive.

Ricky’s disappointment was much more apparent in his voice when he talked about having no aid for the business operators.

Ricky, whose heavy-duty machines were damaged in the flood, said he had no choice but to cut off his telephone line after being forced to pay the bills for the two months his business was closed and asked to pay for repair works in order to reconnect the line.

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