BANGKOK—Floodwaters started seeping into Bangkok Friday, as Thailand's deepening flood crisis cast fresh light on the way rapid urbanization has increased risks for some of the developing world's biggest cities, making them more vulnerable to natural disasters.
Knee-high floods began to appear in some outer districts of the city, a day after authorities said they would take the risky move of releasing some waters that had been building up in recent days behind barricades fashioned along the city's northern outskirts. The idea is to let some waters run through the canals that crisscross Bangkok to escape to the sea, but it was unknown whether the operation could be executed without inundating large parts of the capital.
Bangkok's main business district remained dry Friday, but Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra called on all Bangkok residents to prepare to move their belongings to higher ground.
![[1021thaiflood]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-QF614_1021th_D_20111021124137.jpg)
Getty Images Many residents were preparing for the possibility of higher waters over the weekend. Convenience stores were running out of bottled water and building owners began erecting ramshackle barricades made from sandbags and tarps.
The worries in Bangkok are the culmination of months of rising concern across Southeast Asia, after a series of typhoons and unusually-strong seasonal rains pushed reservoirs beyond their limits and sent waters cascading across the region's low-lying flood plains.
In Thailand, more than 200 major highways and roads are now impassable, while several key industrial estates have been inundated. Damages are expected to tally at least $6 billion and shave up to two percentage points off gross domestic product, according to economists' estimates. Humanitarian groups said parts of the affected provinces—covering about a third of Thailand —are inaccessible, with some towns under water more than six feet high.
"The water is getting higher and higher," said Samnao Rakau, 40, who lives in the district of Bangbuathong just outside of Bangkok. Her sofa, cabinets and Isuzu pickup truck are under water. After sleeping last night on the second floor of her home, she decided on Friday to abandon it entirely. "We'd better evacuate while we still can," she said.
In Cambodia, 18 out of 24 provinces remain inundated, with more than 200,000 people displaced, many of them seeking refuge along national highways. In Vietnam, search-and-rescue teams are still struggling to reach some of the hardest-hit areas. A total of 776 people across the region have died.
Exceptional rains are part—but not all—of the problem. Although bad seasonal floods are common in Southeast Asia, rainfall has averaged 25% more than normal in some areas this year—and has sometimes been a lot worse—resulting in an overflow so big that it would leave Connecticut a meter deep in water, officials said.
But a rising chorus of experts says man-made factors have greatly exacerbated the problems—especially the growing concentration of people in vulnerable areas as Southeast Asia urbanizes.
In the middle of the last century, before Thailand became one of the world's fastest-growing economies, fewer than a million people lived in Bangkok and less than 10% of the country was urbanized. Today, an estimated 12 million people live in the Bangkok metropolitan area, and more than a third of the country's population lives in cities.
That pattern is repeated across Asia, which has more natural disasters than other parts of the world. Demographers estimate Asian cities have 1.8 billion people versus just 237 million in 1950.
Many of the cities, like Bangkok, lie in floodplains that are close to ports and fertile agricultural land. As more people have moved in, they've added schools, factories and housing subdivisions in areas that in some cases are only a few feet above sea level. They have also altered runoff patterns and added road embankments that further prevent floods from escaping.
In Bangkok, local businesses and governments paved over many of the city's canal routes to create roads and conquer mosquitoes. Groundwater in the Bangkok area, like in many other cities around the world, was also pumped out to feed growing human demand, compacting the ground on which the city stands and effectively lowering land levels.
The increasing population density of places like Bangkok, meanwhile, has only made them more attractive to migrants as they become wealthy centers of commerce and industry, sucking yet more people in from the countryside.
As Asia has boomed, "no one thought about where do I build my factories my schools, my hospitals? If you do that in a floodplain, you're going to be flooded," said Brigitte Leoni, a regional communication officer for the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction in Bangkok. "We've grown fast, but not safe."
"I wish I could say this is just a Southeast Asia issue but it's found around the world," said Scott Wilson, an emergency response coordinator with the United States Geographical Survey.
The decision to locate much of Thailand's industrial sector just north of Bangkok has served many companies well, allowing factories to benefit from the city's high-grade infrastructure, ports and airports.
But it has also left them exposed. On Friday, Toyota Motor Corp. extended its suspension of production through at least Oct. 28 at three plants in Thailand because of disruptions to parts suppliers, and said it will cut back manufacturing elsewhere in Asia. Honda Motor Corp.'s assembly plant north of Bangkok remains largely under water.
Meanwhile, chaotic conditions continue to prevail in areas that ordinarily are thriving urban communities.
Military teams have fanned out in boats to rescue stranded families north of the capital, while a mass exodus of people wade each day along roadways clutching bags and animals. Cars and gas stations have been left almost totally underwater.
Jate Sasimonthon, a 25-year-old business owner who sells second-hand cars, said he watched for days as the floodwaters rose around his home in the Bangbuathong area before deciding to venture out on Friday. Leaving his parents behind in the second story of their home, he waded through waters in search of supplies and to investigate other options for where they could move.
After buying a cage for his two dogs, he hopped onto an army rescue boat to travel back home, but wasn't sure what to do next. Already, he said, he'd suffered about $65,000 in losses after the waters swept over his office and some of his equipment. He said he was worried thieves might appear if he abandoned his home, but he wasn't sure how long the house would be safe.
"The water today is higher and stronger than yesterday," he said. "I've got lots of things to think about—my home, my parents, my business, my factory and now thieves. I don't know what to say."
Thailand's flooding crisis began in late July when the country was lashed by unusually heavy rainstorms triggered in part by the La Niña weather effect. Dangerously high reserves of water began accumulating in reservoirs and dams upstream while major river networks swelled from run-off in northern Thailand.
Normally, irrigation officials begin steadily releasing water earlier in the year, but, after a couple of years of bad droughts, they held out longer than usual—orcing them to speed up the release in August and adding to the already-heavy water flow.
By September, authorities responded by shoring up embankments, but there was little they could do to stop the wall of water.
Knee-high floods began to appear in some outer districts of the city, a day after authorities said they would take the risky move of releasing some waters that had been building up in recent days behind barricades fashioned along the city's northern outskirts. The idea is to let some waters run through the canals that crisscross Bangkok to escape to the sea, but it was unknown whether the operation could be executed without inundating large parts of the capital.
Bangkok's main business district remained dry Friday, but Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra called on all Bangkok residents to prepare to move their belongings to higher ground.
Getty Images Residents make their way Friday through flooded streets on the outskirts of Bangkok.
The worries in Bangkok are the culmination of months of rising concern across Southeast Asia, after a series of typhoons and unusually-strong seasonal rains pushed reservoirs beyond their limits and sent waters cascading across the region's low-lying flood plains.
In Thailand, more than 200 major highways and roads are now impassable, while several key industrial estates have been inundated. Damages are expected to tally at least $6 billion and shave up to two percentage points off gross domestic product, according to economists' estimates. Humanitarian groups said parts of the affected provinces—covering about a third of Thailand —are inaccessible, with some towns under water more than six feet high.
"The water is getting higher and higher," said Samnao Rakau, 40, who lives in the district of Bangbuathong just outside of Bangkok. Her sofa, cabinets and Isuzu pickup truck are under water. After sleeping last night on the second floor of her home, she decided on Friday to abandon it entirely. "We'd better evacuate while we still can," she said.
In Cambodia, 18 out of 24 provinces remain inundated, with more than 200,000 people displaced, many of them seeking refuge along national highways. In Vietnam, search-and-rescue teams are still struggling to reach some of the hardest-hit areas. A total of 776 people across the region have died.
Exceptional rains are part—but not all—of the problem. Although bad seasonal floods are common in Southeast Asia, rainfall has averaged 25% more than normal in some areas this year—and has sometimes been a lot worse—resulting in an overflow so big that it would leave Connecticut a meter deep in water, officials said.
But a rising chorus of experts says man-made factors have greatly exacerbated the problems—especially the growing concentration of people in vulnerable areas as Southeast Asia urbanizes.
In the middle of the last century, before Thailand became one of the world's fastest-growing economies, fewer than a million people lived in Bangkok and less than 10% of the country was urbanized. Today, an estimated 12 million people live in the Bangkok metropolitan area, and more than a third of the country's population lives in cities.
That pattern is repeated across Asia, which has more natural disasters than other parts of the world. Demographers estimate Asian cities have 1.8 billion people versus just 237 million in 1950.
Many of the cities, like Bangkok, lie in floodplains that are close to ports and fertile agricultural land. As more people have moved in, they've added schools, factories and housing subdivisions in areas that in some cases are only a few feet above sea level. They have also altered runoff patterns and added road embankments that further prevent floods from escaping.
In Bangkok, local businesses and governments paved over many of the city's canal routes to create roads and conquer mosquitoes. Groundwater in the Bangkok area, like in many other cities around the world, was also pumped out to feed growing human demand, compacting the ground on which the city stands and effectively lowering land levels.
The increasing population density of places like Bangkok, meanwhile, has only made them more attractive to migrants as they become wealthy centers of commerce and industry, sucking yet more people in from the countryside.
As Asia has boomed, "no one thought about where do I build my factories my schools, my hospitals? If you do that in a floodplain, you're going to be flooded," said Brigitte Leoni, a regional communication officer for the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction in Bangkok. "We've grown fast, but not safe."
"I wish I could say this is just a Southeast Asia issue but it's found around the world," said Scott Wilson, an emergency response coordinator with the United States Geographical Survey.
The decision to locate much of Thailand's industrial sector just north of Bangkok has served many companies well, allowing factories to benefit from the city's high-grade infrastructure, ports and airports.
But it has also left them exposed. On Friday, Toyota Motor Corp. extended its suspension of production through at least Oct. 28 at three plants in Thailand because of disruptions to parts suppliers, and said it will cut back manufacturing elsewhere in Asia. Honda Motor Corp.'s assembly plant north of Bangkok remains largely under water.
Meanwhile, chaotic conditions continue to prevail in areas that ordinarily are thriving urban communities.
Military teams have fanned out in boats to rescue stranded families north of the capital, while a mass exodus of people wade each day along roadways clutching bags and animals. Cars and gas stations have been left almost totally underwater.
Jate Sasimonthon, a 25-year-old business owner who sells second-hand cars, said he watched for days as the floodwaters rose around his home in the Bangbuathong area before deciding to venture out on Friday. Leaving his parents behind in the second story of their home, he waded through waters in search of supplies and to investigate other options for where they could move.
After buying a cage for his two dogs, he hopped onto an army rescue boat to travel back home, but wasn't sure what to do next. Already, he said, he'd suffered about $65,000 in losses after the waters swept over his office and some of his equipment. He said he was worried thieves might appear if he abandoned his home, but he wasn't sure how long the house would be safe.
"The water today is higher and stronger than yesterday," he said. "I've got lots of things to think about—my home, my parents, my business, my factory and now thieves. I don't know what to say."
Thailand's flooding crisis began in late July when the country was lashed by unusually heavy rainstorms triggered in part by the La Niña weather effect. Dangerously high reserves of water began accumulating in reservoirs and dams upstream while major river networks swelled from run-off in northern Thailand.
Normally, irrigation officials begin steadily releasing water earlier in the year, but, after a couple of years of bad droughts, they held out longer than usual—orcing them to speed up the release in August and adding to the already-heavy water flow.
By September, authorities responded by shoring up embankments, but there was little they could do to stop the wall of water.
No comments:
Post a Comment