BUTTERWORTH, March 27 — Heavy rain for over an hour this afternoon caused floods in several areas around Butterworth forcing several vehicles to be trapped or stranded along the Butterworth-Kulim Expressway (BKE) near here.
State Welfare, Caring Society and Environment committee chairman Phee Boon Poh said heavy rain started at 3pm causing both Sungai Pertama and Sungai Perai to overflow and resulted in flash floods in several areas.
“About 50 houses were flooded between 0.3 meters to 0.6 metres but there was no evacuation as flood waters receded about two hours later,” he said when contacted here today.
One of the victims, K.Saraswaty, 38, said she was at home and watching television when a sudden heavy downpour resulted in flood waters gushing into her house.
She said, together with her two daughters, they moved all valuables and electrical appliances to higher ground to prevent the goods from being damaged by flood waters.
“The area around our house is always flooded especially if it rains heavily and fortunately today the rain only lasted for an hour, otherwise the flood could have been much worse,” she said.
Meanwhile, a check by Bernama found stranded vehicles believed to have braved the water reaching 0.5 metres on BKE had to be moved to the roadside after being trapped in the flood waters.
A highway user, Mohd Ariff Abdullah said the route was often flooded every time it rained because of poor drainage system. Since it is also a low lying area, motorcyclists had to brave the flood waters even though it was very risky.
“The area that is often flooded is before the pedestrian bridge towards Seberang Jaya Industrial Area due to the low lying area and water tends to be stagnant there. I hope the relevant authorities will monitor this as it happens every time it rains and causes motorists to incur losses,” he said. — Bernama
