Flooding in Sarawak

Floods wreak havoc in Sarawak – Day 1

It’s landas season in Sarawak creating havoc and forced thousands of people to move to higher ground and evacuate not only those living in the low -lying areas of the interior part of Sarawak but also including town and cities throughout the state.

From newspaper report, the floods may get worse in next few days lasting till January 14. The place that I stay is no exception, worsen by incessant rain and poor drainage. Today, we were all stranded at home. Roads leading to the main road were cut off after heavy rains. Only heavy vehicles like buses and lorries could pass through. My site vehicle `Ford’ ( ah, American product!) can’t get through.

However, with the spirit of `YES WE CAN’, we braved the floods and rains to reach the nearest shophouse ( 300M from our house) & informed one of my supervisors to fetch us from there.

During the journey, I requested my QS to take a few pix of the flood situation while we were walking towards higher ground. I was at 2 feet knee deep water level which I thought why not take a photo of me braving the floods with my working bag / laptop and in shorts & t-shirt too! Sadly he took the photo of me when my both feet were submerged by 6 inches high water level. ( no wonder he is a QS- Calculative). My initial intention is to prove how determine all of us despite the situation and the risks where we could have just stay at home and continue sleeping and dreaming about the coming Chinese New Year.

According to Dr M, a credible & intelligent leader must be in the frontline to his his subordinate and not just give orders from behind the scene. In short, LEADERS MUST BE BRAVE ENOUGH TO TAKE RISKS'. So, am i a leader? Anyway, the water is too swallow to get drown!

Well, being dedicated and loyal employees and sense of responsibility to complete the project, an unnecessary day off it’sinful and not our cup of tea.

At last, we reached the office at 10;30 am. Rains continue and the whole site messy. However, rains stopped after lunch and we managed to place 50m3 of concrete to one of the quarters’ slab.

It’s 6pm and we leave our site office taking a ride from our Resident Engineer’s car. He is a good man indeed. As the water keeps rising, he dropped us by the roadside while flood waters spilled onto the stretch of road nearby and we `paddle’ home the same route. Feeling tired, I took a nap and by 8pm I browsed through some paper work and prepare for tomorrow’s `nightmare’.

Hopefully it’s getting better and under control, at least to the route taking us to work.

Note:
Can we blame Mother Nature or rather can we fight Mother Nature?, according to Kuching Barrage Management S/B GM, Captain Goh Chin Guan. sound nope!