More people affected by monsoon floods in 2022, says Malaysian minister

KOTA KINABALU - Floods due to the north-east monsoon season in 2022 have caused more people to be evacuated than usual, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Armizan Mohd Ali.

He said that within the space of a month, the number of evacuees hit 121,864, adding that this is 67 per cent of the total for the entire monsoon season in 2021.

He said the National Disaster Management Agency (Nadma) was carrying out round-the-clock monitoring from November to March.

Mr Armizan’s comments came after reports of a phenomenon called the “king tide” in the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah. More than 110 stilt houses in the state have collapsed due to the high tide phenomenon, coupled with strong winds and bad weather.

Many more houses were damaged in the incident, which occurred at the end of last week, and more homes are in danger of falling as the high tide phenomenon is expected to hit again.

Coastal villages in the state capital Kota Kinabalu were among several districts in Sabah that were affected.

However, the number of people seeking shelter had dropped to 1,589 on Tuesday from 1,647 on Monday.

According to the state Natural Disaster Committee secretariat, those affected include 355 families in Pitas, Kota Belud and Sandakan.

It said the situation in Kota Kinabalu was improving and the temporary evacuation centre at Sembulan had been closed after residents, mainly from Pulau Gaya, were able to return home.

“Pitas continues to record the highest number of high-tide victims with 768. Sandakan has registered 686,” the secretariat added.

In Kota Belud district, 135 people were in relief centres after floods hit their village.

A king tide is known as an exceptionally high tide that occurs when orbital alignments of the Earth, Moon and Sun combine to create a powerful tidal effect.

It is a normal phenomenon and happens once or twice a year in coastal areas, causing unusually high water levels and tidal flooding. Local wind and weather patterns can also affect its intensity.

A king tide can sometimes be at least 30cm above the average high tide level for the year. The highest tide ever was 16.34m tall – recorded at Burntcoat Head Park in Canada’s Bay of Fundy in 1975.

Kampung Forest, a water village of several hundred houses in Sabah, has borne the brunt of the phenomenon over the past few days.

A family of six who had earlier declined to leave the settlement had to finally abandon their house and spend the night in a car after the tide started rising on Sunday night, according to a report by Bernama.

Mr Riden Abdul Mutalib, 43, said his family feared that the only bridge linking their house to land at Kampung Forest would be submerged when the water level began rising at about 9pm on Christmas Day.

“If the bridge collapses, we will be stranded in our house. Many stilt houses in the settlement had collapsed (last Saturday). There is no power supply now,” he said at the village on Monday.

Mr Riden said the family chose not to be evacuated to a relief centre because they wanted to salvage more belongings, but security forces allowed him to go back only after the water level had subsided.

“We just removed whatever we could. We thought the water would not rise to this height again,” he added.

A villager from Kampung Forest, Ms Zulaikah Ali, 23, said her family also chose not to move to a temporary evacuation centre but stayed at a relative’s house on higher ground.

She said villagers were worried about break-ins and looting, which occurred every time the area was hit by a disaster.

Her house was not badly affected by the rising water, but the power supply had been cut off for safety reasons since Saturday’s incident. THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK