As we now know, yesterday’s floods in KL were caused by super heavy rainfall – up to half a month’s worth of rain crashed down in just two hours, overwhelming our drainage and spilling over everywhere. Some of the most dramatic scenes on social media was of the Kesas Highway looking like a brown river.
The stretch that was flooded was near the Awan Besar toll plaza, where Sungai Kuyuh overflowed. Highway operators opened the central divided at KM47.8, allowing some cars to escape via a U-turn. Some were stranded. However, things subsided relatively quickly at the E5, as with the flood at Jalan Kuchai Lama/NPE.
At 7pm yesterday, the highway concessionaire announced that water has fully receded and all routes were open to all vehicles. They shared images of some damaged toll booths and said that cleaning was underway.
Over in KL city, the Smart Tunnel’s Mode 3 was activated at 4.44pm. Mode 3 is when the Smart system has been activated and the motorway portion of the dual-purpose tunnel will be closed to traffic, to allow for stormwater diversion. The tunnel was reopened to traffic at 10pm yesterday night.
Named by CNN as one of the world’s greatest tunnels, the Smart Tunnel is both a motorway bringing traffic in and out of the city centre, and a flood relief tunnel. The 9.7 km storm water tunnel (motorway tunnel length is 4 km) was built to solve the problem of flash floods in KL and its presence surely would have saved the capital city from more serious damage yesterday.
When there are floods, rainwater can be diverted into Smart’s lower channel, while the upper level will remain open to traffic. When heavy floods occur and max water capacity is needed, the tunnel is closed to all traffic and watertight gates open to allow floodwater to flow through both upper and lower channels. This engineering marvel was completed in 2007.
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Inb4 Sydney also got epic flooded, so before anyone starts the blame game….
Sydney’s annual precipitation is around 1175mm as compared to Kuala Lumpur’s 2981mm a year. In other words, since we received more than 2.5x of rainfall a year than Sydney, we should be more prepared to face such adversities with better infrastructure in place. Its this type of complacency and attitude that causes us to be in such position.
We are only flooded for 1 day while Sydney is flooded for 1 week to date. No one can avoid climate change and while we are a carbon sink, Australia is a huge contributor to global warming. It is this type of backward thinking and apeing the West attitude that causes climate change to accelerate for the world including us to be in such a position.
No one can stop climate change so the only solution is this
https://paultan.org/2022/03/04/klang-valley-braced-for-flash-floods-now-is-the-time-to-opt-for-special-perils-auto-insurance-coverage/
In other words, flooding is a normal and expected for us and we should accept it as Mother Nature intended, while in Sydney they should have fully well predicted and prepared when precipitation went above normal. Its this type of complacency and attitude that causes them to be in such position.
Copy paste: “Named by CNN as one of the world’s greatest tunnels, the Smart Tunnel is both a motorway bringing traffic in and out of the city centre, and a flood relief tunnel. The 9.7 km storm water tunnel (motorway tunnel length is 4 km) was built to solve the problem of flash floods in KL and its presence surely would have saved the capital city from major damage over the weekend.
When there are floods, rainwater can be diverted into Smart’s lower channel, while the upper level will remain open to traffic. When heavy floods occur and max water capacity is needed, the tunnel is closed to all traffic and watertight gates open to allow floodwater to flow through both upper and lower channels. This engineering marvel was completed in 2007.
https://paultan.org/2016/12/30/smart-is-one-of-the-worlds-greatest-tunnels-cnn/”