KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 1 — The ground floor of entrepreneur Nor’aisah Mohd Yusof’s two-storey home in Kampung Kubang Chenok, Rantau Panjang, has been stripped bare, and it wasn’t because someone had robbed her.
Anticipating this year’s round of floods would hit her home after several days of non-stop rain, she and her family decided to move all the furniture from the ground floor upstairs for storage.
Their foresight has saved them much trouble. While the floodwaters have reached the ground floor of their house, most of their belongings remain safe and dry on the first floor.
“This, it usually lasts a week, at least the first wave,” she told Malay Mail when contacted yesterday, referring to the latest flood inundating the east coast states of peninsular Malaysia.
“So we have prepared food for one week and we can survive even if we can’t go out.”
The 46-year old wedding planner is among a growing number of Kelantanese who seem resigned to state-wide flooding as the new norm whenever the year-end monsoon season comes around with near daily lashings of heavy rain.
According to Nor’aisah, many of the villagers have taken proactive steps to try and continue carrying out their daily routines at home despite rising water levels and refuse to leave for the safety of the flood relief centres set up.
“No one wants to go to the relief centres. They are uncomfortable, as some of us have many kids and big families, and it is difficult there for old people to go to the restroom.
“After years of floods, we’ve become fed up, and we’ve learnt to live with this, so we put everything upstairs and carry on with our lives,” she explained.
The floods haven’t deterred her from working. Nor’aisah said she has already promised her client that she would install a wedding dais, and she was not about to let the floods stop her from earning her keep.
“I can still do business, the water has only reached my chest. I will go out and using a boat to get to Kuala Krai to install the dais for my client,” she said, chuckling.
Nor’aisah is not the only one with a story to tell. In Kampung Gong Dayak, Pasir Mas, 73-year old Seman Talib waits patiently with a fishnet outside his home.
Every time the area floods, the nearby river will overflow its banks, bringing the fish in the swollen waters right to his backyard.
“When the water levels go up, the fish from the river get washed away and they end up near the house.
“My father will be waiting, and he will catch all sorts of fish: kaloi, lampan and he will sometimes even sell them to the neighbours,” Seman’s daughter Siti Hajar Mohd Kassim told Malay Mail.
She said he was used to the annual floods, and would even go around helping neighbours fix their homes once the water levels had receded.
“He used to be a handyman, I guess he still is. He would go around fixing things for people once the floods have stopped,” she said.
The number of flood evacuees in Kelantan stood at 14,317 as of yesterday.
Flood victims have been put up at 100 relief centres in nine districts: Kota Baru, Pasir Mas, Tumpat, Bachok, Tanah Merah, Pasir Puteh, Kuala Krai, Machang and Jeli.
The Welfare Department’s infobanjir website said Pasir Mas has the highest number of victims — 8,630 from 3,588 families in 44 relief centres.
