(This may help explain the official figure of 384 dead from flooding)
flood management of the people, by the people, for the people
This excerpt comes from an article in the Nation newspaper:
The dispute between officials and residents over the drainage rate at Klong Sam Wa watergate in eastern Bangkok is over, with the height of the gate currently being fixed at 100 centimetres, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said yesterday.
Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra said he had learned of Yingluck’s statement, but needed a written order before he could comply with the decision on the height of the gate.
….
Local residents had converged at Klong Sam Wa watergate throughout Sunday night, demanding that the gate’s height be raised to 150cm from the original, standard level of 80cm.
Feeling threatened by a 1,000-strong crowd, many of whom were armed with tools and hurled angry words at them, officials agreed to increase the height to 75cm in accordance with regulations and the authority they possessed.
The size of the crowd ebbed and flowed throughout the night, with additional villagers swelling the numbers after learning of the rally. The protesters also staged a roadblock at the nearby Hathai Mitr Intersection in a bid to pressure officials into meeting their demand for the gate to be raised to 150cm above water level.
Despite mediation by two Pheu Thai MPs, who said the height could be increased initially to 130cm after negotiations with officials, a group of residents starting digging up both shoulders of the sluice gate in an effort to release more water, before being pushed away by police.
Various proposed levels were repeatedly tossed around by both sides, with heights ranging from 100cm to 150cm being demanded, and 75cm being put forward by officials. The 75cm level was then jointly approved by the government and the BMA. However, a height of 100cm was finally agreed upon by the government and the BMA, as announced by the prime minister.
random flood news from the past couple of days
From the Bangkok Post:
“The water level at Chaengwattana Rd is stable. Yesterday evening the water looked brownish but this morning it is worse, looking blackish. Several fish are jumping out of the surface to get fresh air. It seems the reversed overflowing water from flooded Don Mueang side of the canal has contaminated the canal.”
Eewwww!
More from the Bangkok Post:
Dr Anond Sanitwong in a live NBT telecast noted that if the government and BMA could manage to survive the high tides on October 30, 31, the flood situation will no longer pose any great threat.
He explained the reason for poor management of the flood especially the floodwater diversion to the east and the west as due to poor maintenance of various sluice gates and canals as the country has not faced a great flood for the past 20 years.
During this time, Thailand faced water shortage more often and all the resources have been put to store and conserve water.
Last week the government was able to divert only 10 million cubic metres of water to the east to be drained off by various canals in Samut Prakan. After much work in increasing the number of pumps and canal dredging, this week the government raised the drainage capacity to 40 million cubic metres a day.
The flood at Don Mueang was caused by the water run-off from Navanakorn and the floodwater in Rangsit field. The Chao Phraya river capacity to drain off water is about 250 million cubic metres a day but the huge mass of water is arriving at the rate of about 300-400 metres a day. The reason for present flooding in Bangkok is the inability to siphon enough floodwater to the west and the east, noted Dr Anond.
Once the high tide has passed, Chao Phraya can drain off more water and the increasing rate of water diversion to the west and the east means that floodwater run-off from the North will no longer pose a threat to Bangkok as the amount of drainage matches the incoming fresh floodwater.
A bit of non-news from Not the Nation:
http://notthenation.com/2011/10/yingluck-vows-to-save-city%E2%80%99s-food-courts-at-all-costs/
The embattled Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra today defended the government’s policy of using all flood resources at hand to protect the nation’s economic heart – specifically, the many basement food courts of Bangkok’s downtown business district.
“If floodwaters of only half a meter reach Sathorn Road, flooding could cripple the weekday-luncheon infrastructure of the city,” she said. “We can’t let that happen.”
….
According to charts produced by the PM’s office, Bangkok’s downtown area is home to over 100 large office towers, most of them over 30 storeys high. While 99% of the buildings at risk would be untouched by floods and would even maintain power with light flooding, their basement food courts are considered high-risk zones.
“These food courts provide nourishment for thousands of non-executive office employees, not to mention income for many small businesses and an untold number of jobs,” explained Yingluck. “Without them, workers might have to walk across the street to eat lunch. We can’t put that kind of burden on our Bangkok workforce.”
She further said that although the sacrifice was painful, the loss of 14,000 inundated factories and several million rai of prime farmland was “a small price to pay” in the long run to protect what really mattered.
….
Although many people living outside Bangkok’s main flood walls continue their objection to the destruction of their homes and livelihoods to save the food courts and malls, many Bangkok residents have gravitated to the PM’s message.
“I’m impressed with her sensible outlook on the economy,” said Miaow Vongwatkul, a media buyer for ad agency Saatchi and Saatchi. “Our agency won three Cannes Gold Lions last year and did over Bt400 million in billings. A flooded food court in our building would be a real nuisance to our important work.”
The exodus of flood-weary Bangkokians from the city gathered pace yesterday, jamming outbound highways with cars and adding to packed accommodations in Pattaya, Hua Hin and Chon Buri, among other destinations.
For a few days now, Bangkokians have locked up their homes and migrated to resorts or relatives’ homes upcountry, but after the government on Wednesday announced October 27, 28 and 31 to be public holidays in 21 flood-hit provinces, the intermittent streams yesterday became a flood of stressful holiday seekers.
Fuelling the rush out of Bangkok was the city administration’s declaration of evacuation zones. Residents of Don Muang, Bang Phlat and Sai Mai districts have been told to leave their homes. Partial evacuation was also announced for Thawee Watthana district.
Traffic jams were reported on many roads leaving the capital. Towards the Northeast, motorists crowded High-way 304 from Bangkok, Chachoen-gsao and Prachin Buri to Nakhon Ratchasima, while heading south, the road to Prachuap Khiri Khan’s Hua Hin and beyond saw heavy traffic.
Everyone else is getting out of town. Most of my friends are at one beach or another already. Me? I’m stuck in BKK this weekend. The holiday from work is welcome; it makes my life fairly stress-free. The potential of wading through water to buy groceries is not. The official flood related death toll reached 373 today as two people were electrocuted while wading through water to pick up relief supplies. Crocodiles, fallen power lines… this flood stuff is dangerous business.
And to finish off, the Bangkok Post again:
[A] proposal has been put forward by a group of engineers and water resource management experts, led by Ninnart Chaithirapinyo, vice-chairman of Toyota Motor Thailand.
They met Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra at the Froc yesterday to discuss the proposal….
Mr Ninnart said experts from the group have agreed that five roads in eastern Bangkok are deemed as blocking the northern runoff.
Channels could be cut into the road surfaces to direct floodwater to the east of the capital and out to the sea.
Plans are to dig a channel of between 5m to 6m wide on each road to allow for floodwater to flow.
Mr Ninnart said the private sector came up with the proposal because it had been found that water pumps and the drainage system in eastern Bangkok are not working to their fullest capacity. This is because the roads have blocked the runoff from reaching the areas where the water pumps are installed, Mr Ninnart said.
If the roads are cut through, they can help drain about 60 million cubic metres of floodwater a day, he said.
….
If implemented, the project will help drain a substantial amount of water in the east of Bangkok out to the sea, thus easing the severity of floods threatening the capital’s inner city areas….
“Someone must make sacrifices otherwise we cannot solve the problem involving a huge amount of water,” ACM Sukumpol said.
He said that the roadwork should take about two hours.
Action oriented… spend two hours blowing up roads to open up drainage lanes, then three days building temporary bridges over the sections of road that have been blown up. Result? An extra 60 million cubic meters of water per day drain out of eastern BKK. At least, that’s the proposal put forward by a group of private engineers. Blowing up roads… that sounds like fun!
Voranai Vanijaka at his best, talking about floods, politics and Thai people
Wednesday, late morning: Sand everywhere, in big piles on the ground, with specks flying around, contaminating volunteers’ drinking water. “Heave, heave!” Hundreds of aching bodies, sweat oozing from every pore, laboured under the scorching sun.
They were air force cadets and volunteers. Some were office workers on a corporate social responsibility (CSR) outing. Others lived in the district and some came from elsewhere because they care.
Fill the sandbags. Heave the sandbags. Deliver the sandbags.
….
”I’m sick of these politicians,” a man in his forties sighed. ”They come around, but they never help to do anything. They just talk big and pose for pictures.” He’s a factory worker from the Bang Pa-in industrial estate, which was inundated with water. He has lost his job.
”It’s what politicians do,” a young man said with a laugh. ”It’s to be expected.”
He lightened the mood with bitter humour. ”I just applied for a job at the Nava Nakorn [industrial estate] and got it. Two days later it’s flooded. No more job.”
”Why are you here?” a third man asked.
”We Thais have got to help each other,” the young man replied. Continue reading
an email to a friend and an editorial
I took this excerpt from an email I wrote to a friend this morning:
On the floods… basically it is a mess.
There’s a very real problem to the North and Northeast of Bangkok, and places like Pathum Thani (where I was working two weeks ago) and Ayotthaya are underwater — a meter, two meters….
The government is doing everything it can to “save” Bangkok from the inside out, but some flooding is possible — even expected. Estimates are that it will take 6 to 8 weeks for flood waters to drain from an area the size of Florida and out to sea. We’re talking a LOT of water.
It’s doing terrible economic damage; killing rice crops, closing factories, putting people out of work, damaging homes and cars. It’s bad and getting worse.
Walking into any 7-11 in Bangkok it looks like the shop is closing. Shelves are empty because suppliers are shut down and trucks can’t get here from other provinces. I’m starting to think that an actual food shortage is possible in the coming weeks. It’s hard to describe exactly how bare the shelves are, but it looks like they are getting ready to shut down. Bottled water is almost impossible to find because people are hoarding it at home.
The government has looked like the keystone cops, often making one announcement in the morning, only to announce the opposite in the afternoon. People have been told specific areas are protected and safe, only to see flood walls and dykes crumble, with flood water rushing in. They have had announcements about the need to evacuate areas, only to have no water arrive. Citizens unhappy that there is flood water in their neighborhood while the neighbors next door are dry have torn down flood control walls.
More than 300 people have died, and for many people to the north who have been underwater for weeks already, they face several more weeks before flood waters recede.
It’s not as bad as the tsunami that hit Japan, but you’ve got to compare it with something that bad to try to say it’s anything other than a major tragedy for Thailand.
A week ago I would have told you that Bangkok is safe from the flooding, but the recent events have proven one thing: the government has no effective plan, it doesn’t really know how to control the flood, and it can’t tell people what to expect. People’s trust in the information they’re getting is low, and that includes me.
I went down to the CP river on Monday and it was stunning to see the water level. There probably wasn’t 18 inches between the water and the top of the wall I was standing on. The current was incredibly fast, and the swollen river looked angry and dangerous. The floating pontoon piers that you normally walk down to if you want to board the boats are now pontoons that you have to walk up to. Wild. The numbers being thrown around about the volume of water flowing south is beyond my ability to comprehend.
Still, for all that, life in Sukhumvit is unaffected, except maybe for the stacks of sandbags outside a number of businesses. The stacks of sandbags are growing all the time. A lot of shop keepers have built little brick walls a foot or two high in front of the entrance to the shop that customers have to step over to enter the shop. No one’s complaining about that. Everyone understands.
Tourist arrivals at the airport are steady, with little or no drop off in foreign visitors to the Kingdom. Amazing really.
Overall, I feel pretty safe in Sukhumvit, but I’m not sure that I should.
From an editorial in today’s BANGKOK POST:
[T]he flood should’ve been the final equaliser where all are united under one inescapable destiny prescribed by Nature. But not a chance. The flux of water is no longer a uniting force, as Songkran or Loy Krathong used to make Thai people in the antediluvian age believe (we seem to have past that point). Water is now a knife that divides the urban from the rural, the well-connected from the unconnected, the condo-dwellers from the lowland tenants, the valuable inner city from the dispensible outskirts. It splits Bangkok from the rest.
How we perceive the presence of “water”, or at least a large body of water, from now on will become a crucial cultural study as the trauma and fear of the aquatic fate have etched its marks on our inborn consciousness. There’s fish in the water and rice in the field, remember? Would that Siamese-patented axiom inspired shudder rather than pride these days? The Kingdom was founded here – in the Central Plains – to reap the fruits of the fertile delta where inundation is as cyclical as karma. Water used to mean riches, but as our industrialised mindset and urban acclimatisation has taken on an unstoppable frenzy, to remain dry is a privilege (except at spas), while wetness is weakness, financially and sociologically.
The climate has changed, of course, and so have we. The way … a lot of people, refer to the oncoming floodwaters with a vocabulary that resembles talk of an alien invasion is telling – and frightening – as if we’ve forgotten that all liquid will have to find its way to the ocean. When Bangkok Governor led that archaic ritual to ward off the offensive H2O, we entered a new paradigm where water is dreaded, rain is feared, and everybody, even farmers in Ayutthaya, would prefer to live in a condo, because that’s how they can escape that plague of inequality. As a Bangkok resident who endured a yearly flood at his home near the river until a protection wall was built a decade ago, I’d say: Let the water come. Let the fish come…. And let’s turn fear into reality and live with it. Like the water, we’ll find the way. Politicians always speak of equality, this is the chance to make it real.
water water everywhere
Except inner Bangkok.
Thailand is underwater, and the main river — the Chao Praya — flows right through the capital city. The government has been bumbling from one water related crisis to another for weeks, and it is clear that the floods, which have been caused by immense amounts of rain, have been exacerbated by some questionable water management decisions earlier in the year. Specifically, water wasn’t released from dams earlier in the year when it would have been possible to do so without flooding entire provinces. Instead, the water was retained, and during the monsoon rains the dams filled to capacity and beyond, and have had to open the gates in the midst of the flooding, increasing the already high water levels.
The government is running around wildly trying to prevent the flood waters from pouring into Bangkok. As flood walls and dykes fail to the north and east, it becomes increasingly clear that the government is losing its battle with Mother Nature. Continue reading
many hands make light work
Last night I saw a notice online that volunteers were needed to help organize flood relief supplies. The organizing would happen on the Chulalongkorn University campus, which is not very far from where I live. I set my alarm, got up early and went there to lend a hand. A Thai friend went with me, and we arrived early enough to eat breakfast at a canteen on campus, then go to the flood relief center at 9 a.m. Continue reading
mundy B
writing nothing much about Bangkok as often as possible
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