Video: Waves breach sea wall, overflowing into grounds of Penang hotel

A video has surfaced showing waves crashing over a sea wall and flooding the grounds of a hotel in Penang. It is unclear if it is a new incident or an earlier incident.

The video clip has been posted on the Penang Kini Facebook page.

When contacted, a hotel staff said the flooding of the the grounds was “fake news” but, when pressed, said the damage or mess was minor and it had been cleared by this evening.

In the video, hotel staff are heard being warned by an executive not to post video clips of the ongoing incident on Facebook as directors had seen such video footage posted by staff all over the place.

Irrespective of when this occurred, the question is, why is the hotel trying to suppress this information from the public?

Meanwhile, a resident in Tanjung Tokong said waves could be heard pounding on rocks at the sea front from her high-rise apartment the whole day. The state has been buffeted by strong winds and tides over the last couple of days. (See video of waves at Esplanade.)

Take this as another warning sign of climate change and rising sea levels.

The incident is believed to have occurred a few kilometres away from massive land reclamation work being undertaken by E & O for mostly high-end housing that will eventually cover over 1,100 acres in North East Penang Island.

Nature has a way of biting back.

Earlier this year, the South China Morning Post reported that China was putting a stop to all commercial land reclamation after damning environmental reports:

Tao Jianhua, a marine environment expert at Tianjin University, said it was often cheaper for local governments in China to reclaim land than to obtain rights to land.

He said the tighter restrictions could not reverse the environmental damage caused by huge reclamation works in the past decades.

“It’s too late,” Tao said. “But it is a necessary step to stop those who are still looking … to develop by reclaiming land.”

After a nationwide environmental inspection last year, a number of coastal provinces were accused of lax supervision in granting reclamation projects.

In a report on the southern resort island of Hainan, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said land reclamation projects had been approved that ended up damaging fragile coral reefs and the coastal ecosystem.

The Penang state government, however, is adamant about pressing ahead with land reclamation despite environmental concerns about rising sea levels, damage to fragile coastlines, potential siltation (leading to high dredging costs borne by taxpayers), and loss of fishing waters and food security.

Meanwhile, this was the warning from the Met Department:

SECOND CATEGORY WARNING
WARNING ON STRONG WINDS AND ROUGH SEAS

Updated on 18 June 2018, at 4:00PM