Eyeing a former DID Engineer's views

Extract from former DID engineer

I remember that various heads of department and senior engineers in the 1980s were mostly very competent and experienced non-Malays. Many of them were MU graduates with 1st class honours and they were really good and on the ball with their work. 

40 years later, MU no longer produce such high quality Engineers and DID is staffed with only one skin colour  kind of Engineers.

So, you can understand why the pumps at Taman Sri Muda were missing or did not function as they meant to do. People can see such obvious irresponsible negligence of duty. However, some other important aspects of the problem are not so obvious to ordinary folks.

Some statements of facts:

1. The recent flood is not a flash flood caused by a sudden burst of thunder storm but rather due to prolonged widespread rain covering almost the entire catchment. Rain started on Thursday (16.12) evening and continued through to early Sunday (19.12) morning. 

2. The rivers in the lower reaches started to overflow their banks, inundating highways on late Friday night. 

3. Rain continued to lash Selangor on Saturday until the early hours of Sunday.

4. The flood water continued to rise reaching it's peak on 19.12. evening.

5. There is a dam on each of the major rivers in Selangor except for Sg Gombak.  Outside of the Klang Valley, the major rivers; Sg Selangor, Sg Buloh, Sg Langat and Sg Semenyih are all dammed up.  

6. It is compulsory for all development projects to have retention ponds that is designed to attenuate the peak discharge so that it remains the same as before the development. 

7.  Taman Sri Muda is a special case where a tidal gate and pumped system has been installed to pump water from the Taman into the Sg Klang on the other side during a heavy downpour.

Some points to ponder:

1. Why was there no proper flood forecasting and warning system, since the weatherman already forecast a few days of rains due to a typhoon ?

2. How were the dams operated during this period? Did the operations of the dams exacerbated instead of mitigate the flood problems?

3. The people in 11th mile Cheras found that the water level kept raising on 19 Dec, even after the rain has stopped and the sun was shining.  It appears that Sg Langat has overflowed probably due to emergency release of the Sg Langat Dam at Pangsun.  

4. Did the retention ponds at the various developed sites function as designed during this flood?

5. How is it that the Taman Sri Muda pumping station was not functioning ? Apparently, 2 out of the 3 pumps were not working.  Also, long after Sg Klang water level has dropped, the tidal gate was not opened to drain water from the Taman into Sg Klang.

6. There is a lot of data to be collected from this massive flood which can be processed for future flood mitigation plan.