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Saturday, October 4, 2014

Penang exco points to climate change as cause of flood

A man wading through floodwater outside his house in Jalan P. Ramlee, George Town, Penang, yesterday. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Hasnoor Hussain, October 4, 2014.A man wading through floodwater outside his house in Jalan P. Ramlee, George Town, Penang, yesterday. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Hasnoor Hussain, October 4, 2014.
The Penang government today described the heavy rain last night as “extraordinary” and dismissed any notion that the ensuing flood were caused by overdevelopment of the island.
Chow Kon Yeow, state executive councillor for local government, traffic management and flood mitigation, said the deluge which affected about 2,000 houses, showed the challenge posed by climate change.
He said the amount of rain last night exceeded the average level expected for the whole month.
“We don’t want to be labelled as (Datuk Seri) Samy Vellu to blame God, but statistics show it was not normal rain,” he said, referring to a comment Samy made as works minister in 1995, when he described a deadly landslide as an “act of God”.
On overdevelopment as the cause of flooding, he said construction-related water-flows were curbed by engineering measures and development control.
“But we cannot overcome rainfall intensity,” he said, adding that what had happened last night was beyond human intervention.
“The factor that we cannot control is the amount of rain in such a short period of time.”
He said the flood last night had reached the highest level expected in Penang over an average period of 40 to 50 years, referred to as “average recurrence interval” (ARI).
Because of climate change, it was uncertain if such a level of rainfall would happen again sooner than the 40 to 50 years expected, he added.
“Climate change can mean it will occur every year; we don’t know,” he said, adding that there were no reports of heavy rain and floods in mainland Seberang Perai.
In hydrology, the ARI refers to the average time interval in years where a flood of a given size is expected to occur.
Penang Island Municipal Council secretary Ang Aing Thye said according to meteorological forecasts, the month of October was expected to see between 100mm and 250mm of rainfall.
But, the weather station at Sungai Pinang had recorded rainfall of 137 mm within just two hours, by 10pm last night. “At 8pm, the rainfall had accumulated to 50mm in just 15 minutes,” he added.
He said such volume of rainfall far exceeded the capacity of the island’s drainage, which is designed to handle flooding of just 2 to 5 years’ ARI, as the flood last night reached an ARI of 40 to 50 years.
Chow also brushed aside state Barisan Nasional (BN) chairman Teng Chang Yeow’s question about whether overdevelopment that destroyed catchment areas and excessive cutting of hills were the cause of frequent flooding.
Teng yesterdat labelled present-day Penang as the “Venice of Malaysia”.
Chow replied that it was doubtful that the development that has taken place over the six years since Pakatan took over was more than BN's.
He said the state government and the drainage and irrigation department were running against time to get allocations and implement projects to alleviate floods as much as possible.
State executive councillor Jagdeep Singh, who is assembly member of Datuk Keramat, which has neighbourhoods most vulnerable to flooding in Penang, described the deluge last night as “extraordinary and phenomenal”.
He said the heavy rainfall together with high tide along the coasts caused houses in low-lying areas in his constituency to be submerged. The affected areas included Jalan P. Ramlee, Kampung Makam and Jalan Masjid Hashim Yahaya.
- TMI

1 comment:

  1. "Penang exco points to climate change as cause of flood"

    Just to share this...

    http://www.livescience.com/43307-uk-floods-climate-change.html

    Also this as a food for thought...

    http://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/iceland-volcano-weather-modification-resistance-to-rothschild-cabal/

    You be the judge.

    ReplyDelete

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