MARUDI: The 180,000 people living along Sungai Baram, Sarawak's second longest river, call it 'banjir sungai'.
This is because it used to flood once or twice annually.
In 2021, the "banjir sungai" shocked many of them as it was on a scale they had not experienced since the Big Sarawak Flood of 1963 where flood waters had reached up to 6m in some areas.
The 1,000 residents of the Kenyah Ngurek longhouse in Long Banyok said it was "really strange" as it flooded four or five times that year between May and September.
Residents said the flood waters rose by between 1m and 1.5m and subsided only three to five days later.
That year, the floodwaters damaged the longhouse, which had never happened before.
"Before, the floodwaters never reached the longhouse," they said.
A study, conducted by the CSO Platform for Reform-Environment Cluster (B.E.A.CC.H.) and environmental conservancy group SAVE Rivers, found that in 2020 and 2021, people living along the river had experienced an increased frequency and intensity of flooding.
One of the negative effects of the increased frequency of flooding was the quickening of river's bank erosion.
The study found that four villages or longhouses in lower Baram — Long Ikang, Longan Sibung, Kuala Tutoh and Long Banyok — could soon be forced out of their homes due to severe riverbank erosion.
At Long Ikang, a Kenyah-Kayan settlement that's a 30-to-40-minute boat ride downriver from Long Banyok, the 800 residents there have started their fight to save their 73-door, century-old home from slipping into the river's waters.
Severe erosion on a 3.5km stretch of the bank fronting the settlement in the last two decades has left one of the four longhouses there, the 10-door Kenyah longhouse Uma Kaeng, a mere 3m from the river's edge.
Ten years ago, the longhouse was more than 15m from the edge, SAVE Rivers chairman Peter Kallang told the 'New Straits Times'.
He said over the years, residents had see storehouses built beside the river "eaten up" by it.
Due to safety reasons, these storehouses are built quite a distance from the longhouse as this is where combustible materials like fuel for boats are kept.
Kallang, the settlement's most famous son, said their "waterfront" now was a picture of destroyed cement footpaths, abandoned homes and tilting electricity poles with some close to falling into the river.
The residents had even relocated the one building they cherished most, their 42-year-old chapel, further away from the river bank.
It's now 2km from the bank.
The chapel was dismantled wood by wood, brick by brick and rebuilt at the new site.
"We're doing this is because it's expensive to transport building materials from Miri to Long Ikang," said Kallang, whose longhouse in the settlement is the 68-year-old, eight-door Uma Belata.
