6 JANUARY, 2025

A year to remember - 2024 typhoons, floods, shipwrecks and sinkholes

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Like every year 2024 had its stand-out disaster, and they all have an insurance angle of one sort or another. Let's take a trip down memory lane on a voyage that reminds us how important it is to get the right insurance cover to protect our finances.

Super Typhoon Kong-Rey
Late October 2024 saw Taiwan's stock exchange shut down for the first time in more than a decade. The nation was faced with an unusually powerful typhoon called Super Typhoon Kong-Rey, which approached via the Philippines with winds exceeding 125 knots or 232 kilometers an hour. As the typhoon equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane, it also led to closures of businesses and schools. The storm followed hot on the heels of storm Krathon, which hung around off the coast of Taiwan for days before dumping record-breaking amounts of rainfall on the island and causing havoc to businesses.

The last typhoon to hit Taiwan so late in the year was Gilda, way back in mid-November 1967, followed by Krosa in 2007. This time around Kong Rey was fuelled by warm sea surfaces and low windshear, which intensified the storm. It also dropped over 200 mm of rain on the Philippines, some areas of which were still flooded following Tropical Storm Trami. Kong-Rey ultimately caused the cancellation of twelve shipping routes and numerous flights, and seventeen crew from a Chinese ship had to be rescued.

All this extra rain raised worries about floods and landslides along with melioidosis, an infectious disease often made worse thanks to bacteria being flushed out of contaminated soil. Luckily cover for storm damage is a standard feature of property insurance policies.

Unprecedented floods
Since 2003 Malaysia has suffered some of the worst ever recorded flooding, which has triggered landslides and caused dramatic flash flooding. November's heavy rainfall in Kelantan caused chaos, displacing 147,162 people across ten 10 states and breaking the previous 2014 record. Many more Southeast Asian and South Asian countries also suffered, with tragic fatalities and widespread displacement.

Our monsoons are driven by the AIM or Australian-Indonesian monsoon system, whose strong airflows from Asia to Australia brings a lot of moisture, this time made worse by 2024's El Niño-Southern Oscillation patterns. Our country's Meteorological Department predicted 5-7 major rainfall events during the 2024 monsoon season, which means we could see more floods in the next three months. It is clearly more important than ever to buy the right flood insurance.

Navy shipwreck leads to one death
A Malaysian mine clearance diver was killed in late August as he carried out salvage works on the wrecked navy ship KD Pendekar. Leading Seaman I Arman San Hermansa was working off the shore of Johor on the KD Pendekar, which has sunk three days earlier two nautical miles southeast of Tanjung Penyusop in Kota Tinggi. All 39 seafarers on board were rescued before she sank, having hit a mysterious underwater object.

Initially some people thought it was down to the navy ship's age, commissioned way back in 1979. Inspections were carried out on a third of the remaining fleet, which includes ten to fifteen ships of roughly the same age, but the sunken ship's age was later ruled out as a cause. While insurance can't save lives, it compensates for financial losses. Take a look at our marine insurance policies and see what they cover.

A new Malaysian disaster simulation site for 2025
In April two Royal Malaysian Navy helicopters collided during a rehearsal for the navy's 90th anniversary, killing and injuring ten people. An 8m deep sinkhole near Jalan Masjid India in Kuala Lumpur swallowed a 48-year-old Indian tourist and her body has never been found. All this and more means it's very good news to see the construction of a disaster simulation site for the Special Malaysian Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team at Pulau Meranti, which should be completed in early 2025.

It'll be Malaysia’s first disaster simulation centre and the Asean region's second, tasked with improving the efficiency and professionalism of SMART members who handle all sorts of disasters, natural and otherwise. Around 150 SMART members will be given extra training at the centre to optimise their skills. At a cost of almost RM33.4 million, the National Disaster Management Agency who owns the facility is hoping it'll help keep more people safe in the face of future disasters.

How can we help you in 2025?
Do you need new insurance, better insurance or different cover? Whatever you need, we'll help you find it at a fair price, protecting your personal and business finances whatever our the fast-changing world throws at you.