KUANTAN: Videos and images on social media showing wooden debris allegedly floating in Tasik Kenyir have been causing alarm but a spokesman from the Tasik Kenyir Terengganu Tourism Association says the incident did not happen in the lake.

       Muhammad Jefri Nawi said the floating wood debris, as seen in the viral posts on social media, was actually in the outflow and downstream from the lake.

       "There is nothing really within the lake itself. I understand there was a landslide near the saddle dam in Jenagor but Tasik Kenyir itself was not affected," he said when contacted.

       Jefri, however, was unsure of what had caused the landslide and the debris flow.

       He said there were several excavators that had arrived at the scene and the debris was being tied together to prevent it from flowing further to a water pump house downstream.

       He also said the water level of the dam was still below the overflow mark and tourism activities within the lake had already resumed.

       Tasik Kenyir is an artificial lake created in 1985 by the Kenyir Dam to provide water to the Sultan Mahmud Power Station.

       Meanwhile, Telemong assemblyman Datuk Rozi Mamat had reportedly called on the Terengganu government, the Forestry Department and Tenaga Nasional Bhd to investigate and identify the cause of the incident immediately.

       He said the Hulu Terengganu district, especially around Tasik Kenyir, was not a logging zone.

       Academy of Professors Malaysia environment and sustainability cluster head Prof Datuk Dr Ibrahim Komoo had his own take on the situation, saying that it was almost similar to the floods in 2014.

       "Extensive information on social media can show the real situation of what happened in upper Sungai Terengganu and in its estuary of Kuala Terengganu.

       "Upstream, photographs and videos circulated by internet users show landslides and widespread debris flows in the mountains or hills of the Kenyir Dam reservoir.

       "A lot of driftwood debris in the Kenyir Dam demonstrates there's a debris flow in the upstream sub-basin of Sungai Terengganu," he wrote in a Facebook post.

       Ibrahim said the Kenyir Dam acts as a check dam or sabo dam that collects debris from continuing to flow downstream, which could result in catastrophic floods of debris in villages near the river.

       A sabo dam is designed to slow water currents from uphill areas to lower river streams as well as to trap logs, rocks and debris.