Bangorn Dednuam, 60, went out in intermittent showers on Monday to find food. Her supplies at home had run out. “We didn’t manage to pack our things in time, so there’s nothing stocked in the fridge,” she said.
Waist-deep water stood in parts of the Thai capital after 320 mm (12.6 inches) of rain fell over two or three days last week, nearly as much as Bangkok normally gets in all of September. Whole neighbourhoods went under and the drains were swamped. Thousands of people spent the day in evacuation centres, Reuters reported. At least 5,901 had moved into 234 of them, a city administration official said.
A national flood
Bangkok is one of 41 provinces hit by floods since September 16. The interior ministry said at least eight people have died and more than 580,000 homes have been disrupted. More than 80,000 residents in flooded areas cannot leave their homes, permanent secretary Unsit Sampuntharat said, and mobile kitchens and boats are being pressed into service. The aim is three meals a day for everyone during the flooding and for at least seven days after the water recedes.
In the eastern province of Rayong, next to a major industrial belt, authorities ordered evacuations on Monday after floodwater pushed two reservoirs past capacity.
The bill
Aat Pisanwanich, an economist at Rangsit University, put nationwide damage at no less than 11 billion baht ($327 million), and said losses will climb if conditions do not improve. He expects the floods to take 0.3 percentage points off this year’s GDP growth, bringing it to 2.1 percent, and about 0.5 points off third-quarter growth, leaving 1.7 percent. The economy grew 1.9 percent year on year in the second quarter, down from 2.8 percent in the first. Bangkok and the east will take the brunt, he said, particularly wholesale and retail trade, while industry and agriculture suffer elsewhere.
The University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce estimated damage in the capital at about 7 billion baht and the national total at about 12.3 billion baht.
In Bang Kapi, one of the worst-hit districts, vendors set up stalls on floating plastic boxes and drums. Marisa Singprakhon moved her goods to the edge of the market, though she still had to stand knee-deep in water. “Customers don’t want to go in, they don’t want to stand in the water for a long time,” she said. “So we have to stand in the water outside to sell.”
Bangkok sits on a delta of soft clay about 1.5 m (5 ft) above sea level, and it sinks by several millimetres a year. Its 8.4 million people fight floods through a six-month rainy season. Last year’s southern floods, triggered by 630 mm of rain over three days, killed at least 145 people and flooded more than 33,000 homes.
