PETALING JAYA: Malaysian singer-songwriter Eric Lin, whose family home in Section 25, Taman Sri Muda, Shah Alam, was badly damaged by the recent flood, has described his heartbreak at the house’s condition.

       “I’ve been living here for 30 years now and we’ve been hit by flood four times already this year. But this one is the worst,” said the 39-year-old Lin.

       “The house was badly hit by the flood 25 years ago, which was pretty serious but it wasn’t as bad as it is now.

       “My parents have put a lot of effort into the house for the past three decades and now, everything is gone and we’ll have to rebuild from scratch. It’s very tough.

       “Literally, everyone’s belongings in the area are all gone.”

       The extent of the damage suffered by Lin and his family was documented in a video that he shared on Facebook and Instagram on Dec 22.

       It has since got over 32,000 views on Instagram and 279,000 views on Facebook.

       Many of his followers have reached out to support Lin and his family, urging them to be safe and to stay strong.

       “Indeed devastating. Pray for u and family,” said one follower.

       In the video, the water level is seen to have reached the ceiling of Lin’s house on the ground level and he told The Star that at one point, it was almost up to the second floor.

       “There were only three steps left before the water got to the second floor.”

       A family member braving the floodwaters outside their home.

       On Monday, Lin, his parents, younger brother and the brother’s girlfriend were on their second day of cleaning up the house.

       According to the artiste, they still have a long way to go to fix everything.

       “We thought it would be safe to start cleaning up but now, they are saying there will be a second wave.

       “I posted the video as we needed help. I think many people don’t realise how badly the area was hit,” he said, adding that his brother’s friends as well as some volunteers had turned up to help clean the area.

       On the damage, Lin said: “The cost is going to be high. To be honest, I don’t know how we are going to cope with all the repairs.”

       One of the things ruined in the flood was a baby grand piano which had been in the living room.

       “We had that for 10 years. One of the legs broke during the flood. We’re just piling all the damaged stuff from the ground floor outside the house along the roadside.

       “I think the biggest problem around the area is the faulty sluice gate. It’s hard to avoid a very big flood.

       “But if the sluice gate issue was handled better, I guess our houses wouldn’t have been submerged in water for so many days,” he added.

       The water in the area receded after additional water pumps brought in by the Drainage and Irrigation Department were used to pump out the stagnant floodwaters and the sluice gate resumed operations.

       Lin said they now worry every time it rains.

       “Although we’ve invested in a barrier (to stop the water from coming in), there was no way to stop it that weekend as water was even seeping through from the tiles.

       “It’s a very well-developed area for so many years now. I hope, going forward, the gate system would be fixed to help make Sri Muda a safer place to stay.”

       He recalled that his mother had woken everyone up at 3am that Saturday to get them to move their cars to higher ground in a neighbouring area as the rain was not stopping.

       “By morning, our toilet on the ground floor was filling up with water and the water was only getting higher.

       “We packed some stuff and by evening, we felt it wouldn’t be safe to stay at home due to the electricity (outlets getting wet). Our (front) auto gate was already acting up at that point.

       “I think at around 7pm, the water reached below our chest. We made our way out to the road and had to walk slowly; it took us an hour to reach higher ground.

       “Our neighbours later informed us that by midnight, the water had covered the entire ground floor,” he said.

       Lin said he and his family are now staying at his sister’s place while they sort out the devastation left by the flood.

       “My mum is especially very sad over what happened. She’s been tearing up every now and then, even when we were cleaning up the house and she had to let go of so many things she’d built with the house.

       “It’s heart-breaking to see her like that. Anyone her age shouldn’t have to go through something like this,” he said.

       Lin said they managed to shift upstairs a sewing machine that his sister fixed a few days before the flood.

       “But it still got submerged. We haven’t given up on her sewing machine since it’s mostly mechanical and we will try to fix it again.

       “The baby grand piano, on the other hand, was very hard to let go of.”