Sebanyak 24 kampung di Kota Belud terjejas banjir manakala 8 jalan raya masih tidak dapat dilalui semua jenis kenderaan kerana ditenggelami air.
KOTA KINABALU: Sebanyak 24 kampung di Kota Belud terjejas banjir manakala 8 jalan raya masih tidak dapat dilalui semua jenis kenderaan kerana ditenggelami air.
Keadaan tersebut menjadikan bilangan mangsa banjir di 6 pusat pemindahan banjir di Kota Belud setakat 7.45 pagi ini meningkat kepada 1,729 orang berbanding 1,503 malam tadi.
MELAKA: Kerajaan Melaka mengaktifkan jentera bantuan banjir bagi menyelaras dan memantau bencana berkenaan yang melanda beberapa kawasan di negeri ini terutama di Durian Tunggal di Alor Gajah dan Tehel di Jasin.
Ketua Menteri Melaka Datuk Seri Idris Haron berkata misi bantuan banjir berkenaan akan dipengerusikan sementara oleh Pegawai Kewangan negeri Datuk Roslan Ibrahim kerana Setiausaha Kerajaan Negeri Datuk Seri Naim Abu Bakar sedang bercuti.
“Kita telah bersiap sedia dan 4 kawasan pemindahan banjir di Durian Tunggal telah dibuka setakat ini dan jumlah mangsa yang dipindahkan agak ramai mungkin kerana ramai yang beraya di kampung.
“Banjir ini berlaku kerana hujan turun lebih 4 jam sejak dua hari kebelakangan ini dan menyebabkan beberapa kawasan dinaiki air,” katanya kepada pemberita ketika ditemui pada majlis rumah terbuka sempena Aidilfitri Speaker Dewan Undangan Negeri Melaka Datuk Othman Muhamad di sini, hari ini. Read more
Zulkhari Lan Abdullah from Senai, helps remove the mud and grime from his in-laws’ home in Spang Loi. — Pic by Malay Mail.
SEGAMAT, Jan 31 — Rural communities hit hard by the floods will face a tough time ahead as the floods not only damaged their homes, but cut off their main source of income.
Villages such as Spang Loi, which rely heavily on the surrounding land to sustain themselves, now depend on the daily delivery of dry and wet goods.
A total of 225 victims from 69 families were evacuated to SK Spang Loi due to the floods since last Wednesday.
Spang Loi is a village located 40km from Segamat.
It was formed in 1950 during the Emergency as part of General Sir Harold Briggs’ forced resettlement plan to combat the communist threat. Read more
JANUARY 29 — This month’s floods in Thailand are a worrisome reminder of the increasing uncertainty of extreme weather events. Thailand’s flood season usually ends in November, but this year, influenced by a low depression and a strong northeast monsoon, widespread flooding in the south of the country has killed more than sixty people, affected over 330,000 households, and resulted in widespread asset losses.
Far from being an anomaly, however, the unpredictability of these extreme weather events may become the norm. Using a United Nations global methodology to estimate future disaster losses, we anticipate that average annual losses in Thailand due to floods will reach more than US$2.5 billion (RM11.1 billion) by 2030, or 0.65 per cent of the country’s 2015 GDP, which is the equivalent of 2.6 per cent of gross fixed capital formation, and 2 per cent of gross savings.
The final impact on Thailand’s GDP for 2017 will depend on the duration of the floods. To date, the worst affected sector is rubber, which accounts for 1.5 per cent of GDP and 2.4 per cent of export revenues. The Rubber Authority of Thailand estimates that approximately 10 per cent of the country’s rubber production has been lost so far. As Thailand is the world’s largest exporter of rubber, accounting for 38 per cent of world exports, a tighter global market supply may result in an increase in prices, which would somewhat mute revenue losses. Nevertheless, based on climate outlook forecasts expecting the floods to recede by the end of January, a loss of 10 to 15 billion baht could still be expected. Read more
MIRI, Jan 26 — Fourteen primary schools in Kuching, Sibu, Bintulu and Miri were closed today due to the floods in Sarawak.
Sarawak Disaster Management Commitee secretariat from the Civil Defence Force Major Ismail Mahedin said the school closure involved 1,232 students. Read more
SABAK BERNAM, 24 Jan — Anggota-anggota Angkatan Pertahanan Awam Malaysia (APM) membantu memindahkan mangsa banjir di Kampung Parit Lima Gambut, Sungai Besar hari ini.
Seramai 246 mangsa banjir dari 74 buah keluarga ditempatkan di lima pusat pemindahan sekitar daerah Sabak Bernam setakat 3 petang tadi.
–FotoBERNAMA (2017) HAK CIPTA TERPELIHARA
SHAH ALAM, Jan 26 — The number of flood victims at three evacuation centres in the Sabak Bernam district increased to 364 people (105 families) as at 8 am today, from 352 people last night.
A spokesman at the Sabak Bernam Disaster Operations Room said the number of victims at Dewan Sri Bernam, Sungai Besar, increased to 161 people (46 families), from 151 victims (42 families) last night.
“The number of victims at Dewan Parit Baru, Sungai Air Tawar, shows a drop from 169 people to 171 people (51 families),” he said when contacted by Bernama. Read more
Shops inundated by flood waters in Segamat town on Tuesday night. Pic from the Star Online.
JOHOR BARU: Eight of 10 districts in Johor have been hit by floods bringing the total number of evacuees to 8,204 from 2,428 families housed in 70 relief centres statewide as of early Wednesday morning.
Johor Health and Environment Committee chairman Datuk Ayub Rahmat said that Muar was the latest district to be affected by floods with 90 victims evacuated and placed at the Dewan Semai Bakti Gugusan Felda Moakil relief centre.
“Segamat remained the worst hit, as the number of flood victims increased to 6,609 involving 2,012 families in 50 centres as of 6am on Wednesday. Read more
BY ISHAM JALIL
NST file pix — A villager evacuating her home in Rantau Panjang early January 2017. In the two recent floods in Kelantan, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and homes were destroyed. Bernama Photo, taken from NST Online.
THE Kelantan government is still in denial that logging and land-clearing activities have caused or worsened floods, even after the 2014 flood, which was the worst the country has ever seen in almost half a century.
The state authority reiterated that logging did not cause the floods but rain did, and that the floodwaters did not come from the logging areas, but from the national park. Unfortunately, pivoting the rhetoric isn’t going to solve the problem, nor does it relieve the suffering of Kelantan people affected by the floods each year.
Despite the denial, several experts from various fields, including meteorology, forestry and sustainable development, have highlighted overwhelming evidence linking land clearing and worsening floods in Kelantan — such as alluvial deposits as far as 1,000m from riverbanks seen post-flood, formation of acres of sandbars in Sungai Kelantan due to accelerated erosion upstream, and countless satellite images showing soil erosion from cleared forest.
The United Nations has stated that deforestation may be one of the principal causes of severe flooding. This is evidenced by the floods in Bangladesh in 1998, Haiti in 2004 and Mexico in 2007.
Experts say soil eroded from cleared land flows into adjacent rivers, causing siltation and shallowing of the riverbeds, hence, worsening the flood. Read more
KOTA BHARU 28 MARCH 2016. ( FILE PIX 08 DECEMBER 2015 / KBE983C ) Kawasan pembalakan haram yang dirakam anggota penguatkuasa Jabatan Perhutanan Kelantan di Hutan Simpan Kekal Chiku, Gua Musang pada akhir tahun lepas. IHSAN JABATAN PERHUTANAN KELANTAN
BY ISHAM JALIL
This is a story about the Kelantan flood; about how a natural disaster could have been mitigated by humans but wasn’t, and even worsened by them.
In 1990, Pas took over the Kelantan government from Barisan Nasional. Three years earlier, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the then prime minister, had marginally defeated Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah in a bitter fight for the Umno president’s post. Tengku Razaleigh, still fresh with wounds from the fight, had his revenge in the 1990 general election when he and his newly formed party, Semangat 46, helped Pas defeat BN to win the state. Dr Mahathir had lost Kelantan to Pas and Tengku Razaleigh, and he was upset and angry.
Subsequently, throughout the 1990s under Dr Mahathir’s administration, the federal budget allocation to Kelantan was significantly cut. Between 1991 and 1995, under the 6th Malaysia Plan, less than one per cent of the RM116 billion federal development expenditure was allotted to Kelantan, the lowest allocation compared with all other states. This practice continued until 2003.
Consequently, there were very few development activities in Kelantan during the 1990s. Highways, roads and dams that were supposed to be built were cancelled. Economic growth was inhibited, and job availability was limited. As a result, there was a mass exodus of locals out of Kelantan during this period. Hundreds of thousands of Kelantan folk had to emigrate to find jobs. Currently, it is estimated that one in three of the 1.5 million Kelantan people live and work outside the state. If Dr Mahathir had intended to punish Pas and Tengku Razaleigh, the Kelantan people were collateral damage. Read more
KOTA BHARU: Jumlah mangsa banjir di Kelantan meningkat kepada 14,074 orang setakat 9 malam semalam berbanding 13,496 orang pada 5 petang.
Pengarah Angkatan Pertahanan Awam Malaysia (APM) Kelantan Zainuddin Hussin berkata sebanyak 41 pusat pemindahan dibuka bagi menempatkan mangsa banjir terbabit di 5 jajahan negeri ini.
Jumlah mangsa banjir paling ramai ialah di Jajahan Pasir Mas iaitu sebanyak 10,094 orang daripada 3,753 keluarga yang ditempatkan di 30 pusat pemindahan, diikuti Jajahan Tumpat sebanyak 3,456 orang daripada 1,103 keluarga yang ditempatkan di 6 pusat pemindahan, katanya ketika dihubungi malam ini. Read more