Flood situation worsened in Kedah

News Update by Sira Habibu and Manjit Kaur of The Star

ALOR STAR: More than 7,000 people were evacuated from four districts last night as the flood situation worsened in Kedah.

This bring the total number of people moved to higher ground to more than 10,000 since floods hit Kedah on Saturday.

The situation in Langkawi was, however, improving while in Alor Star, the water level remained at between one and 1.5m.

The floods are back. Along with it brings memories of those days when I was still a little girl. Once a year, during the monsoon season, our school would be flooded. The first place to be submerged was the school canteen, followed by the classrooms. We would all gleefully remove our socks and shoes so that we could start playing and wading through the muddy waters with our bare feet.

I vividly remember the rows of benches aligned as to make a path enabling us to buy our food from the stalls in the canteen during recess time. Some naughty ones would try to push each other off the bench into the water, causing quite a havoc. Not to forget the fun of spotting and catching the numerous tadpoles swimming around.

After learning about the many parasites and bacteria that would have been present in those muddy waters, I hereby understand why my dad would scold me whenever I came home with muddy clothes, socks and shoes after playing at the newfound “waterpark”. I used to think he was such a killjoy. After all, everyone was having fun, why couldn’t I?

Anyway, mini floods may have been fun during childhood days, but severe floods are no big joke. People actually die due to floods, homes are actually damaged and destroyed, and people are actually homeless and stranded. Apart from that, my small town was actually jammed up due to the diversion of traffic from the flooded areas.

I sincerely hope that the flood waters will recede soon…