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Friday, November 24, 2017 | 9:03 PM | 0 comments

Senior citizens loved to share their experience. Some wrote journals for future references for us, the next generations. On 15 Sept 2017 (my birthday Dx) Penang started to rain heavily and a month later, it got worst. As I watch the news with a heart laden with sadness for the victims, I believe there is a hope everything will be alright. Of course it will, it will bear survivors. And what if an old survivor write about this disaster a few years later? - Aliaa

I shall never forget those terrible days when it rained and rained and it seemed

that was not going to be an end to the heavy downpour. Again and again I

thought of ancient times and myths and Quranic stories about floods. It seemed

we were all to be wiped out of existence. Everyone said it had not been like this

for many years; some said thirty one, others said thirty-seven. The rain

continued unabated. The rivers were heavily swollen by now. All of the rivers

overflowed their banks. Thousands of people were rendered homeless and still,

there was no likelihood of the deluge coming to an end.

The first reaction to the rain was a wild one. Everyone hoped it would soon end. After all, this was a heavy rainfall area and it did rain, so, what was there to worry about? But there were no intermittent flecks of sun and the heavy downpour resembled nothing that we had ever seen. Was this a punishment for some lapses? Some sins? Some failures? Prayers were of no avail; the rain continued. By the fifth day it was terrible. Life was very difficult. Everything was badly dislocated. No movement was possible except on boats. The whole town had become like so many houseboats. The ground floor floor of every house had become uninhabitable. People clustered together in safer places, In higher buildings. Earlier there was attempts to salvage something but soon the attempts were abandoned and people scrambled for dear life. The normalcy of life become a long forgotten thing. No milk, no regular meals, no vegetables and no communication with the outside world. No telephone links, and of course no wifi connection! Nothing at all. One only had one’s own tiny self and that was all.

There was reason for concern for by now dead animals floated in the streets and there was no uncontaminated drinking water. A few houses also collapsed resulting in loss of life and property. Food was air dropped on one or two occasions but the continued bad weather hindered this aid also. Poorer people who had to rely on their daily earnings were starving. They had no food and no shelter and no other means of sustenance. The flood was like a scourge of the God.

The heavily laden skies seemed to have shed a great deal of their burden and by the tenth week the skies appeared a little lighter. Gradually it began clearing up, people heaved sighs of relief. The rain stopped and the level of the water started receding. It became possible for rescue team to arrive and to be organised. It also become possible for more food source to be air dropped safely within our reach. I remembered the uproar of stories circulating among us survivors of how other people were collected from very odd places, hovering between life and death. Sitting in limited spaces, sometimes on treetops, and not getting any nourishment, their limbs were cramped and their bodies emaciated.

There was every possibility that there would be an epidemic of cholera. The authorities asked for volunteer medical teams; The Red Cross Society also organised rescue teams and some arrived from neighbouring areas. Inoculations were given. Other help was also rendered. But the epidemic did break out and a few people died. It was soon checked and that itself was an achievement.

As most calamities come and recede, so did this. The town slowly crawled back to normalcy. Many lives had been lost and also a great amount of property. It took time to repair the damage done to machines and to get vehicles on the road again but human effort is capable of doing anything and with me, as a survivor writing this a few years later, it definitely did proved resilient enough to recover from disaster.

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Written By : Aliaa Sorfina 2017

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