18th December – Volunteering During the Flood
The floods that hit our country last year were devastating. I have seen videos of the flooding on Twitter and Instagram but never thought it could get this bad until I saw it with my own eyes. From my previous blog post, you can see that I was going through the flooding as well. But what I saw the next day, was nothing compared to what I went through.
On the night of the flood, I was forced to stay over at my friend’s house as most of the roads were covered with water until around 3 or 4 am. When the sun rose, my girlfriend and I decided to leave my friend’s house and hope that the roads were clear by that time. During our journey, the roads were clear. Only puddles of water on the sides of the road were present, which let us breathe a sigh of relief. My girlfriend’s house is about a 10-minute drive from my friend’s house in Bandar Botanic. Along the way, we saw loads of cars and motorbikes stranded in the middle of the road, waterlogged and unable to start. When we reached my girlfriend’s housing area, the roads were filled with water. I would say that it was up to shin-level. The day before, her family had called her to let her know that water had entered their house, so they had to move all their furniture upstairs. But even when we reached there the next morning, the water level was still quite high, but luckily not high enough to enter houses anymore. I walked her to her house and proceeded to go back to my house.
When I reached my house, I caught up with my parents about everything that happened the last night. Somehow, my housing area was not as badly affected by the flooding. Seeing this, I knew I had to do everything I could to help the people who were more badly affected. I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw that a friend of mine, who is one of the heads of MUDA Klang (the political party), was heading to Seksyen 25, one of the worst affected places. I texted him and asked if I could come and help, to which he replied by saying that I could. They arranged a meetup in Taman Rakyat in Klang for all the MUDA volunteers to gather.
At around 1 pm, my friend picked me up and we met with the rest of the volunteers at Taman Rakyat. Half of the team then departed for Sentosa, one of the worst affected places in Klang, while the other half departed for Seksyen 25 Shah Alam. I was with the cohort that left for Seksyen 25. We had been given 2 boats by the MUDA team as the water levels there were almost 2 meters high.
Going there, my head was filled with different scenarios that might have happened. The news about people who were stranded on the second level of their houses because the water levels had risen to cover their entire ground floor overnight, some people who don’t have the second floor went to the roof of their houses, and pets such as dogs and cats have nowhere to go. Only the worst possible images were all floating around in my head.
When we reached the area, some locals were warning us about the water levels and said that we would not be able to drive there as our cars might stall in the middle of the flood. So, we parked at the edge of the area, pumped our boats, and made our way to Seksyen 25. We had to take a walk from Seksyen 19 as the floodwaters were still at high levels. As we walked from the car, we could see the egregious effects of the flooding the night before. Trees had fallen down, cars were filled with water on the inside, and people were clearing out wooden objects from their homes as the water had spoiled the wood. As we made our way, the water level started rising. From being at our feet’ height, it quickly rose to our chest height after about a 5-minute walk. We all had to make sure our pockets were empty and hold everything in our hands. That was an experience that I never want to live through again. Imagine being stuck there for a whole night.
We continued walking in the chest-level floodwaters. Rubbish was floating around everywhere. Diapers, sanitary pads, leaves, you name it. Everything was floating all around us. Along our journey, we saw some kids playing in the water. Jumping from stranded cars into the water as though it was a swimming pool. It felt good to see some positivity coming from this calamity. But I would not recommend playing in flood-waters after seeing the amount of rubbish that was floating around. We also saw PBSM and St. John’s volunteers in boats giving food to people who were stuck in their homes. We managed to thank them for their service on our way as well to show some gratitude.
After about a 20-minute walk, the waters finally started to recede. There, we saw many people waiting at a junction. When we reached the junction, we realized why they were just waiting there. They were unsure of how high the water levels were. The only people making their way to Seksyen 25 were those just getting on the boat from this junction. Seeing the number of regular people making do with whatever they have to rescue the people who were stuck in their homes was heartwarming. These were just ordinary people who had four-wheelers and fishing boats and decided to take their time to help in whatever way they could. After waiting at the junction for about 15 minutes, we decided to test the water level to see if we could make it through by foot to get to Seksyen 25. We tried it and the water was at chest level, similar to the earlier flood we went through. Dragging our boats along, we braced for another 30-minute walk through chest-level floods. I forgot to mention one thing. During this entire journey, my friend, Edwin, one of the heads of MUDA Klang, was receiving calls every 2 minutes regarding volunteering at Seksyen 25. All the calls were coming from family members of the people stuck in the floods at Seksyen 25. Listening to all those distraught voices, begging him to help their family members was disheartening. There was nothing we could do until we reached there. I would say he answered about 400 calls that day. I even answered some, as sometimes he was a little busy.
The walk felt like forever. It was even more tiring as it is so hard to walk when half your body is submerged in floodwater. After about an hour, we finally saw land. It was just a bridge that was filled with people. It was the only dry land we had seen on our journey. And that was because the bridge was elevated. As we made our way to the bridge, it was about 5 pm. We noticed that the water level was dangerously high here. Cars were submerged in the water. You could only see the roofs of the cars. The entire first floor of the houses was filled with water, forcing the victims to go to their second floor. We set our boats in the water, and some of the volunteers made their way to give food and drinks to the victims. I stayed on the bridge and tried to help the victims that were on the bridge. The goal that day was just to make sure all the victims were fed, as the rescuers were prioritizing people in houses with only one floor.
Seeing the victims get off the boats was very sad indeed. They arrived at the bridge, waiting to be taken to the junction that we stopped at earlier as four-wheelers were there waiting to take the victims to the shelters that were provided for them.
We stayed there until nightfall came when we could not see anything. All we could hear were the screams of victims, crying out for help. I will never forget the sounds that night. After that. We made our way back, through the floodwaters.