Anusak Konglang (AFP) Google News 7 Oct 11;
BANGKOK — Thailand's prime minister warned Friday that Bangkok was under threat from the country's worst floods in decades as the authorities stepped up efforts to protect the capital and key industrial areas.
"The flooding situation is now considered a serious crisis," Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said in a nationally televised address, noting that 252 people have died across the country due to more than two months of heavy rains.
While the capital has so far escaped major flooding, Yingluck said the city of 12 million people would not escape unscathed.
"It is going to directly affect Bangkok," she said.
Homes, roads and factories are already inundated just north of the low-lying capital and more storms are expected in the days to come.
Many residents in affected areas have ignored the government's appeal to evacuate to safe areas, preferring to stay and guard homes submerged by the rising waters.
The authorities raced to put up flood walls alongside canals and rivers on Bangkok's northern outskirts as huge amounts of muddy water flow down river.
"Nothing could be worse than the current situation, but the most important thing is to prevent flooding in Bangkok and two industrial estates" north of the city, said Science and Technology Minister Plodprasop Suraswadi.
A key test is expected in mid-October, when large amounts of run-off water reach the capital and high tides make it harder for the floods to flow out to sea.
"Every canal in Bangkok is already at full capacity. If more rain comes it's likely that Bangkok will be inundated," Bangkok governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra said on television.
He said the city was preparing emergency stocks of food and drinking water, and setting up evacuation centres at schools.
The floods -- several metres deep in places -- have damaged the homes or livelihoods of millions of people in Thailand, particularly farmers, according to the government.
The military has been deployed to help victims and army camps are being opened to evacuees.
Japanese car giant Honda has suspended production temporarily after its parts factories was inundated in Ayutthaya, the ancient capital just north of Bangkok.
According to economists at the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, the damage amounts to 104 billion baht (3.4 billion dollars) in terms of the impact on buildings, crops, livestock, industry, tourism and trade.
It said the impact could knock about one percent off the country's annual economic output.
With more storms forecast, the fear is that the economic costs could rise if the waters reach the capital's business and economic hub.
"Certainly Bangkok will be flooded. We have to assess the situation after each storm," said independent expert Royal Chitradon, director of Thai Integrated Water Resource Management.
Bangkok, located on the gradually sinking Chao Phraya delta, has been classified by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as one of the cities most at risk from coastal flooding by 2070.
Thai Flooding Closes Prison, Factories; GDP To Suffer
Sinthana Kosolpradit PlanetArk 7 Oct 11;
Flooding forced the evacuation of hundreds of inmates from a prison in central Thailand on Thursday and a prominent think tank slashed its forecast for economic growth this year as farmland was inundated and a big industrial estate had to close.
At least 244 people have been killed in floods in Thailand since mid-July, the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said. Another 167 have died in neighboring Cambodia and 15 in Vietnam in what a United Nations agency said was the worst flooding to hit parts of Southeast Asia in 50 years.
"The full extent of damage has yet to occur, in particular the full impact of water flow from the upstream Mekong River," the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement
In Ayutthaya, about 105 km (65 miles) north of Bangkok, 1,700 prisoners were evacuated from a prison in the old town, clinging to a rope stretched between its gates and a heavy truck as flood water swirled around them.
Somsak Rangsiyopas, deputy director-general of the Correction Department, said water nearly 2 meters (six feet) high had inundated the prison and the area around it.
"We had to the use rope to get people out of the prison due to the strong current," he said, adding that the prisoners were
being transferred to nearby jails.
This week, the 400-year-old Chai Wattanaram temple in Ayutthaya, a World Heritage Site, was flooded.
A big industrial estate in the area with more than 40 factories, many of them Japanese-owned, had to close on Wednesday because of flooding, newspapers reported.
The Center for Economic and Business Forecasting, part of the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, said on Thursday it had cut its forecast for gross domestic product (GDP) growth this year to 3.6 percent from 4.4 percent because of the floods.
It estimated the negative impact at between 1.0 and 1.3 percentage points of GDP but said that was offset a little by continued strength in exports, which it now expected to grow 22.6 percent this year rather than 16.1 percent.
DAMS OVERFLOWING
Dams are struggling to cope with the flow of water caused by unusually heavy monsoon rain, which normally falls from August to October.
Director general of the Irrigation Department, Chalit Damrongsak, said water would have to be released from the Bhumibol dam in Tak province 420 km (260 miles) northwest of Bangkok, which was 97 percent full, even though that would add to problems further down the Ping river.
That river flows into the Chao Phraya, which flows through Bangkok. The capital has seen only minor flooding and authorities say the inner city should be safe.
Weather forecasters in Vietnam said flooding in the Mekong Delta should peak in the next four days.
At least 15 people, including nine children, have died due to floods since late September in Vietnam's central and southern provinces, state media said.
Dozens of houses had been swept away in the Delta and 27,700 more were under water, state-run news website VnExpress said.
In Cambodia, 167 people have died in floods and more than 160,000 homes were under water, the Cambodian National Disaster Management Committee (CNDMC) said.
(Editing by Robert Birsel)
