If I remember correctly, the last time it happened was way back in 1993 – December 25th, Christmas night. It poured buckets the whole night through and at 4.00 a.m. my neighbour called telling me to move my car quickly. I bolted out of the house, drove the car to higher ground and waded back home in the knee-high flood waters. When I entered the house, I saw that the water had come into the living room – the Christmas presents, the Australian sheepskin floor rug were all swimming around.
I alerted my wife and the maid (I had one then) and in a jiffy, we moved the refrigerator and the gas cooker upstairs and then started to shift the other things to a higher level. The water subsided the next day when the rain stopped…but by evening, it rose to an even higher level – up the split level until two steps up the staircase. We were stranded for three days but at least, we could do the cooking as the two most essential items were salvaged in time. (After the flood had subsided, I had to call 10 young and strong students to the house to get the refrigerator down! Amazing what strength one may have in an emrgency!) All my neighbours could not save anything – their refrigerator, piano…all those were submerged and damaged in the flood that year. What had caused it then? Well, they were constructing a bridge or doing some works along one of the tributaries of the Sungai Merah and had obstructed the drainage. There wasn’t any flood in much of the other parts of town that were not within the vicinity of the watershed.
Well, it has happened again this year – January, 2009…and I’m not really sure what the reason is this time. For one thing, it had been raining cats and dogs non-stop for the last three days. On Sunday morning, a friend of mine from the Ulu Sg Merah/Nang Sang area had driven through the flood and he and his family were safely on dry ground before his Unser broke down. They took refuge at my house the whole day and by evening, when the flood had worsened and the rain showed no sign of abating, he hired a lorry to send them back to their house, leaving his car at my place.
By nightfall, the water had reached my place and this was the scene from my water-filled car porch when I woke up on Monday morning…
(Looks familiar, Stanleycarter? LOL!!!) Just an inch or two and the water would have entered the house…
By afternoon, the water had subsided and the sun came out for some three hours or so. At least, there were glimpses of blue sky among the clouds and other than some slight drizzle now and then, it did not actually rain for the rest of the day.
Like in 1993, much of Sibu town including the flood-prone Lanang Road was not affected, so I reckon it has got something to do with the drainage into Sungai Merah, aggravated by the king tide at this time of the month. All I could do was to pray that the weather would hold all through the night and the wretched flood waters would not be back…
I think it did rain a bit in the night but the water level is much lower this morning. It looks like the worst has passed…
P.S.
You can hop over to victorkiu.com to see photos of the more severely-stricken areas.
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 