KUALA TERENGGANU: A year-old girl drowned during a flash flood at her grandfather’s house in Kampung Raja Baram, Chendering, yesterday.
Nurhasniatul Nabila Zaidi’s parents were asleep in their room when the incident occurred.
“She must have woken up and wandered into the pool (of floodwater) which was two feet deep,” said her mother Azilawati Ibrahim.
“We only noticed that she was missing when we could not find her.
“We found her body on the staircase leading down from the house with her head in the water and tried to revive her, but she was already dead.”
Torrential rain, which began late on Wednesday night, resulted in the evacuation of 360 flash-flood victims in Gong Badak, here, to three relief centres in the district yesterday.
The evacuation involved 80 families from Taman Murni Permai and Kampung Pak Tijah, located in low lying areas affected by torrential rain.
State police flood operations centre officer Inspector Suhaimi Hamzah said 289 people from 64 families were sent to Sekolah Tok Jambal, while 62 people from 14 families were relocated to Sekolah Tanjung Gelam.
The remaining nine from two families were sent to the Gong Badak Civic Hall at 4.40am yesterday after their houses were flooded in knee-high water.
But most of the evacuees from Tok Jambal had returned home at 4pm after water levels receded.
District Welfare Department disaster coordinator Monira Sulaiman said most of the victims had returned home to assess the damage and started cleaning up yesterday evening.
“Based on our observation, the water levels had receded and some residents were allowed to return home.”
However, she said that her department was monitoring the situation hourly to see if the remaining victims could also return to their houses.
