SELANGAU: What happened in the past is a lesson learnt for Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK) Nanga Kua as the staffs were ready to face the disaster and have saved the school’s properties from being destroyed.
The school’s headmaster Matu Ekum when contacted on Saturday (Feb 12), said the school was inundated by floods on Friday night around 11pm when the waters started to rise.
The school was submerged in 10-feet deep waters where the worst affected places were the male and female students’ dormitories.
“However, past experiences in 2015 and 2017 where we were hit by major floods, have made us better prepared.
“The rain from Friday morning to evening has caused water to overflow into our school area late at night,” he said, adding that the water overflowing into the school was noticed by the security guards.
Following that, the teachers and staff sacrificed their sleep to work together and move important school properties.
Matu added that the school has provided high shelves to place items such as government documents, printers, computers, refrigerators and other essential equipment.
As of 3pm today, the water level was still high and had reached the quarters’ stairs.
Earlier, around 7.25am, the water level had risen as high as 10 feet.
“In fact today, our school was supposed to have a replacement class but it had to be postponed due to the floods.
“We had to use boats as transportation to evacuate the flooded area,” he said.
Matu was also thankful that the replacement class that was supposed to be held today, had enabled all the teachers and support staff to be present at the school and as such had helped in salvaging important items.
He said SK Nanga Kua has a total of 94 students including 39 daily students, 40 boarders and 15 pre-school students as well as 20 school staff members including 12 teachers.
According to him, the flood report was submitted to the state disaster coordinating officer this morning.
In the report, a total of 12 teachers including administrators, eight support staff members and two private employees were at the school.
There were six boarding students still in school, while the other students were brought back home by their respective parents.
As at 3.30pm today, the waters were slowly receding and the weather was still cloudy.
Matu claimed that the school had applied to the government to move SK Nanga Kua to a higher area but the request had not been granted yet.
