Flood Receding for now

Some 4,000 evacuees in Sarawak have returned home as the flood situation improves.

The Malaysia Meteorological Department downgraded its red alert warning to orange in Kuching, Samarahan, Sri Aman and Betong Divisions until tomorrow.

Red is the highest level of alert where there are widespread storms and flooding while orange is for moderate storms.

There would only be scattered rain throughout the state in the next few days adding satellite images show that the rain clouds have moved out of Sarawak to Sabah.

The state capital recorded merely 4mm of rainfall up to 3pm yesterday, a sharp drop from the 205mm on Sunday.

However, the city and low-lying areas could continue to be flooded until tomorrow evening because of the ‘’king tide” phenomenon, which forced water level in the Sarawak River to peak.

Aerial survey of the flooded areas, saw water was still rushing down from the upstream reaches of the Sarawak River in Lundu and Bau districts to the city.

Flooding forced the closure of 119 primary schools and 13 secondary schools in southern part of Sarawak yesterday.

Many of them are expected to remain closed today and headmasters may use their discretion to close their respective schools if the situation warranted it.

The number of villagers still sheltered in more than 30 evacuation centres had dropped from nearly 9,600 from 1,474 families to below 5,000 as of yesterday afternoon.

There were only two roads in Bau district which were still submerged in the floodwaters, down from 21 while the flood situation in Sibu and Bintulu Divisions had also improved.

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