Johor issues warning of floods with high tides, rain

The Star 2 Dec 09;

JOHOR BARU: The Johor Baru City Council (MBJB) has issued a flood warning here.

Its mayor Mohd Jaffar Awang said the council was issuing the warning after the Malaysian Meteorological Department predicted high tides of over 3m here.

“We anticipate tides as high as 3.6m from Dec 1 to 8, Dec 15 to 21 and Dec 30 to 31,” he said, adding that heavy rains coupled with the high tides posed a high risk of flooding.

Mohd Jaffar said the council had taken precautionary steps for the flood season, including freezing the leave of staff involved in the council’s flood operations centre.

Among other measures were sending flood warning notices to flood-prone areas and placing a mobile generator at Dataran Bandaraya in case of power outage in the area, he said.

He said that MBJB had also taken counter measures to curb flooding in the city.

This included carrying out service and maintenance on all equipment at the Sungai Segget, Sungai Ayer Molek, Sungai Chat and Parit Utama Abdul Samad floodgates to ensure the gates worked properly.

“We have also prepared a flood relief and management guidebook for all departments in the council to ensure that relief centres are initiated in case a floods,” said Mohd Jaffar.

He said the public could get in touch with the flood-centre secretariat at 07-2244 139.