THE year is 2021, but it felt like it was 1971 on Saturday. Like then, the floodwaters were a house-high. The New Sunday Times encapsulated the mayhem in a two-word headline: "Flood Chaos".
Brick steps of what was a house in Kampung Jawa in Hulu Langat stood out as a metaphor for the plight of the people caught in Saturday's trail of destruction: stairway to nowhere. Finding no one to help, people took to social media — the 21st century's friend and foe — crying out to everyone and anyone to save them.
The deluge was unexpected. Or was it? In one sense, the rainfall was extraordinary. In just a few days, one weather station recorded a reading of 360mm of rainfall. Or as National Water Research Institute director-general Datuk Nor Hisham Mohd Ghazali says it, one month's rainfall in 24 hours.
No existing flood drainage system is designed to cater for such a torrent of downpour, he says. Add to this the water brought to shore by high tide and we have just the right mixture for a deluge. Rivers must empty out easily for floods not to happen, but on Saturday, they just didn't.
So floods of an unusual kind happened. Thirty days of rain in one day isn't normal.
But the Klang Valley flood chaos of Dec 18 cast doubts, in the minds of some, about the role of the RM1 billion Stormwater Management and Road Tunnel (Smart). But to Nor Hisham, the tunnel did more than it was designed for.
Instead of the three million cubic metres of water it was designed to store, it helped drain two million more. Had it not done so, the Saturday deluge would have been worse. Here perception must surrender to facts.
Plus, the disused mining ponds and other such water retention lakes were filled to the brim. Such rainfall is a once in a while kind. In this way of seeing, the deluge was unexpected. The authorities were caught by surprise. But should they be so unprepared? We don't think so.
The National Disaster Management Agency appears to have deployed its emergency response assets, but lack of accessibility seems to have delayed their arrival.
At the local level, assistance was late in coming. Could they have done better? Yes. Because a deluge isn't a strange thing in the Klang Valley. It may be once in 50 years, but it does happen. Expecting the unexpected is one way to be prepared.
Another is to have an effective flood alert system. Communication failure led to many being stranded on major roads, unaware of the danger ahead that stalled traffic and floodwaters, at places car-deep, would eventually cut them off or sweep their vehicles away.
Why weren't electronic boards and other media used to alert the road users is a question those in charge of emergency response must answer.
For the longer term, our planners need to acclimatise themselves with climate change. For too long we have allowed our economic interests to trump climate risks.
If this isn't enough, development is beginning to encroach on the fringes of retention ponds, thus limiting its future storage potential. Like Smart, disused mining ponds can be used as part of a system to contain floodwaters before releasing them into the rivers.
With these gone, we may have to live with many Saturdays of the Dec 18 kind. Or worse.