KOTA KINABALU: Res­id­ents of Kam­pung Ram­payan Laut in Sabah are grap­pling with the after­math of the worst flood in over 50 years.

Incess­ant rain on Sat­urday even­ing caused flood­wa­ters to rise rap­idly in the vil­lage, catch­ing many res­id­ents off guard and leav­ing many homes sub­merged in waist-high water.

Jali­nah Md Jali, 62, said many vil­la­gers were unable to save their belong­ings, unlike in pre­vi­ous flood­ing incid­ents. “Dur­ing nor­mal floods, the water would usu­ally remain out­side and did not enter the house.

“This is because the water has to over­come the front door bar­rier,” she told Bernama while clean­ing mud and remov­ing water from her liv­ing room.

“On Sat­urday, the water reached waist height,” Jali­nah added. She did not have time to save her valu­ables and her fur­niture and elec­trical items were dam­aged.

“Ini­tially, every­one thought it would be just a nor­mal flood as the water level was low. “But the flood­wa­ters rose very fast. I am very sad because I have lived here for over 60 years and have never seen a flood this severe,” she added.

Jali­nah lamen­ted that Kam­pung Ram­payan Laut is now bet­ter known for fre­quent flood­ing than for devel­op­ment.

She said she hoped that local rep­res­ent­at­ives and rel­ev­ant agen­cies would find long-term solu­tions to flood­ing.

Another vic­tim, Jali Jawi, 52, said the flood­wa­ters came into the vil­lage from two dif­fer­ent sources sim­ul­tan­eously.

“The flood was big­ger and worse than before. The water came not just from the land but also from the sea,” he said.

He added that water began rising around 5.30pm and only receded early yes­ter­day morn­ing.

A check by Bernama revealed that flood­wa­ters had receded to ankle level, with most of the area still covered in thick mud, mak­ing clean­ing dif­fi­cult.

Dam­aged fur­niture and house­hold items car­ried away by the flood were scattered in front of sev­eral houses, while res­id­ents were busy remov­ing mud from their homes and dry­ing salvaged items.

Accord­ing to the Sabah State Dis­aster Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee, the num­ber of flood vic­tims rose from 282 on Sat­urday to 495 yes­ter­day morn­ing. The vic­tims are cur­rently sheltered at two relief centres.

In Kota Kin­abalu, 180 vic­tims from 46 fam­il­ies are cur­rently housed in a hall at the Al-munir Mosque, while 315 vic­tims from 113 fam­il­ies in Beaufort are being sheltered at the Selagon Evac­u­ation Centre.