- By Tammy, Thai Intel’s humanity journalist
- “Flood Pounds Ancient Temple,” reports the Bangkok Post.
Thailand is an ancient country, and for some reason, the Thais have seldom learned from history-in this case, that the only way people can deal with natural disaster-is through proper planning and preparations.
Bloomberg Reports:
Oct. 5 Thailand’s worst floods in at least 50 years may slow economic growth and cause $1.6 billion of damage, posing the first leadership test for Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra since taking office two months ago. The deluge swept across most of the country from late July, killing 237 people, displacing 2.6 million others and damaging more than 10 percent of rice plantations in the biggest exporter of the grain, data from the Department of Disaster Prevention & Mitigation and the Ministry of Agriculture & Cooperatives show.
Thailand had the opportunity, to turn one of the darkest times in global economic development, into a shining example of global water-resource management.
- But that never occurred.
Thailand is a low-lying country, that for decades, throughout the country, the main mode of communication was the water ways. Then the European came, and with it, the automobile culture-that required road.
And thus, it started in Bangkok, the culture of filling in water-ways, and turning them into roads. Then it spread throughout Thailand-where Thailand, a low-lying country, in the tropics, sees a great deal of rain.
Flooding is a repeated occurrences in Thailand during every tropical rainy season-that can nearly always be traced to the road ways preventing natural run-off of waters and the lack of adequate water-ways system to manage the down-pour.
- As Taksin says, “Turn crisis into opportunity.”
Turning crisis into opportunity-is a very positive thing to say. Unfortunately for Thailand, the Bangkok-Centric Thai establishment’s previous government, the Democrat Party of Abhisit, never learned that lesson.
If was 2008, and the global economy was in a crisis-and countering that demise, global governments were coming out with massive economic stimulus packages. Here in Thailand, Abhisit also proposed and passed a US$44 billion stimulus package.
With that announcement, Thai academics immediately pointed out, that Thailand as an agricultural country with a history of poor water resource management, could benefit substantially, if only a big chunk of that US$44 billion went to build several system of water canals in Thailand.
Agriculture productivity would increase and with more canals, Thailand water management system would be more effective.
That never happened.
Abhisit decided against doing that, and spent most of the money on land communications projects-such as road and mass-transit, among others-giving only a fraction of that US$44 billion to water canals projects.
And believe it or not, US$ billions went to the so-called “Dust Free Road” program-that went paving, little used roads, that weeded through remote areas.
Only god knows, how many millions of natural water ways have been disrupted, by these little used “Dust Free Roads.”
Today, news in Thailand, is that because there is so much rain this season, the dams are filled to the brink-and the rivers and canals in Thailand, can not handle to amount of water-heading into the entire water resource related system-causing run-off and severe flooding-over vast area of Thailand.
- But tentatively, Bangkok is safe from flooding.
But Bangkok is dry. A big reason for that, is that US$ billions, have went to put in a water drainage system in Bangkok, along with a river water over-flow barricade system.
“Bangkok is the heart of Thailand’s economy and it can not be allowed to flood,” says the Democrat Party, Bangkok governor-as on the social network, like Twitter, Thais are talking about how selfish it is for every Bangkok surrounding province to be hit with flood, as Bangkok is kept dry.
One city planner outside of Bangkok, puts it bluntly, “We are going to request to use Bangkok’s water ways to handle some of our water and we will have to see what they will say.”
Meanwhile, if all the above is not unfortunate enough, many Thai knows that the political party that benefited most from the “Dust Free Road” program, is the political party with members that went encroaching on a forest reserve, about 2 hours from Bangkok, massively-cutting down trees to make way for resorts.
Already, again, as Bloomber reports, the damage of this rainy season, is estimated, in the US$ billion-wiping out massive track of sugar and rice-growing area-where the GDP is said to be hit significantly, and about 250 lives have been lost and 1,000s have gone homeless.
- Would Yingluck make the same mistake as Abhisit?
Well, we would never know. One thing is for certain, Yingluck does not have a US$44 billion stimulus package.
The following is from the New York Times:
As Thailand Floods Spread, Experts Blame Officials, Not Rains
By SETH MYDANS
Published: October 13, 2011
BANGKOK — As some of Thailand’s worst flooding in half a century bears down on Bangkok — submerging cities, industrial parks and ancient temples as it comes — experts in water management are blaming human activity for turning an unusually heavy monsoon season into a disaster.
The main factors, they say, are deforestation, overbuilding in catchment areas, the damming and diversion of natural waterways, urban sprawl, and the filling-in of canals, combined with bad planning. Warnings to the authorities, they say, have been in vain.
“I have tried to inform them many times, but they tell me I am a crazy man,” said Smith Dharmasaroja, former director general of the Thai Meteorological Department, who is famous here for predicting a major tsunami years before the one that devastated coastal towns in 2004.
The monsoon season this year has brought disaster to Cambodia, the Philippines and Vietnam as well as Thailand, where 283 people are reported to have died.
Thousands of people have been displaced as typhoons have battered the Philippines, and the country’s steep rice terraces of Banaue are reported to have been damaged by mudslides.
Floods have spread through Cambodia, where the city of Siem Reap is reported to be knee-deep in water, with floodwaters reaching the nearby temples of Angkor.
Thai officials are warning that, in the next few days, Bangkok could be inundated by a combination of heavy floodwaters from the north, unusually high tides and monsoon rains. People in some of the most threatened neighborhoods are building sandbag barriers around their homes and emptying shops of food, drinking water, batteries and candles.
Preparations in Bangkok have become frantic. About 45 miles of sandbags have reportedly been laid to reinforce a dike along the Chao Phraya River, which flows through the city. New flood barriers and drainage canals are being built. People are being told to stay alert.
As the water flows south from the inundated cities of Nakhon Sawan and Ayutthaya, with its submerged brick temples, the local news media have reported that 150,000 sandbags are moving south too, as soldiers truck them from one hard-hit area to the next high-risk point.
As the government rushes to protect some urban or industrial areas by diverting water from them, local officials have faced off over whose towns will be saved and whose will be sacrificed.
In Ayutthaya, two groups of villagers are reported to have battled over a dike that protected one side and condemned the other. As the unlucky residents dug at the dike to send the water toward their neighbors, a gunfight broke out, wounding one of the villagers. In some places, according to news reports, troops have been deployed to protect the dikes.
Among those stranded by floodwaters were 15 elephants, which climbed to the top of a wall a week ago to escape fast-rising water in Ayutthaya. They include seven mothers and their babies and a nine-year-old elephant known internationally for his painting skills with his trunk, said Ewa Narkiewicz, communications director for a group called Elephantstay, a nonprofit agency that cares for retired elephants.
“If proper help does not come soon, the mothers and babies are in grave danger,” Ms. Narkiewicz said. Each animal consumes up to 440 pounds of food a day, but the boats that could be used to ferry bananas, pineapples and sugar cane to them are busy rescuing stranded residents, she said.
Mr. Smith, the meteorologist, said the flooding situation this year had been aggravated by bad water management.
“They miscalculated the water levels and did not discharge water from the dams early enough in the rainy season,” he said. “The dams are almost full now, so they discharge the water at the same time, and all the discharge water comes down to the low-lying areas.”
Those areas become obstacles to the free flow of water, he said, as developers continue to extend their activities.
“They build their estates in low-lying areas that are supposed to be reservoirs,” he said, “and they throw up a dam or a dike, and they block the flow where the water is supposed to go in rainy season.”
Once the floodwaters reach Bangkok, they will pour into a city that has lost its natural defenses: a huge network of canals that have been filled in — or clogged with garbage — as the city has become an overcrowded behemoth.
“Our city plan is inefficient,” Capt. Somsak Khaosuwan, director of the National Disaster Warning Center, said by telephone.
“The weather hasn’t changed that much,” he said. “We always have more water in the rainy season. But if we don’t have integrated water management, we will face this problem again next year.”
Man and nature are increasingly estranged, he said, and their coexistence is becoming a battle. “This is the sign that we should preserve the forest,” he said. “We’ve hurt nature for a long time, and right now it seems that nature wants to pay us back.”
Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting.
Related articles
- Amazing Thailand Special (4) US$3 Million promised to anyone who can prove Taksin has oil deal in Cambodia (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
- Journalism: (12) Lone “Twitter” asked how did a pollster get in-touch with Thais hurt by flood for poll results? (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
- Developmental News: Russian economist “Thailand is a rich country with poor prople” & Yingluck’s people government at a lost (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
- Thai Politics Factoids Analysis: From Matichon’s fight on reconciliation to the video surveillance silver bullet (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
- Political Analysis: Who is Thailand’s Prime Minister? “Thank God it is not Prem or a Thai military general” (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
- Foreign Relations News: All talk in Bangkok on Taksin’s passport but what of Abhisit’s passport if he has to exile Thailand? (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
- Thai Media Factoids Analysis: From Nation’s Abhisit the excellence to Yingluck’s elevation expose (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
- Political Analysis: Why is Thailand so corrupt? “Because the Thai press is extremely corrupt” (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
- Military Intelligence: Yingluck “Normalizes” Thailand’s relation with cambodia, with “Thai Spies” future, hanging on a clift (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
- Abhisit Exit Analysis: What Abhisit did not say in his Thailand nation-wide broadcated “Exit Speech” (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
- Democracy News: Thai Democratic Activist, “Nithiraj Group” tries to break the Thai coup-democracy cycle (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
Leave a Comment
No comments yet.
