tomazbodner

TJH, on 2011-11-09 16:16:17, said:

I guess you need to filter and boil ice for 5 minutes before you can enjoy your smoothy also...

Jokes aside, I spent 3 months in hospital for drinking Bangkok tap water some 15 years ago and would say even without floods, don't even think about it without a filter and UV light treatment or boiling.

There is a bit of a difference flooding an area, that is scarcely populated, and area that is densely populated.

First of all there's a very different amount of garbage and sewage.

Flooding say 10 km2 of farmland with a couple of farms will destroy crops, kill livestock and cause a lot of misery to the families affected, though it will also bring nutrients to the soil for the next time they grow plants on them.

Flooding 10 km2 of densely populated city centre will bring maybe thousands of tons of garbage and sewage water, filled with fatal bacteria and viruses in contact with people living there, possibly causing a high number of fatalities, as hospitals are unable to cope, possibly flooded themselves. People affected would also be moved to shelters, where high concentration of people in fairly limited space would contribute to epidemics of airborne diseases, causing a huge loss of life. Let's not forget that the air temperature outside, and with that still water temperature is perfect for growing bacteria, making matters so much worse.

Then comes the shoddy construction quality of many of the larger buildings in the cities, especially Bangkok, where foundation might be too shallow, and soil softened from weeks or more of inundation could potentially cause structural failures to the buildings, causing even more misery and destruction.

So there is a difference on what gets flooded.

But at the same time - governments of Thailand have for 50+ years ignored the problems of water flow controls, limiting the investments into a few water gates and dams, while completely ignoring calls for a permanent solution to the problem, not only for one city but for the country as a whole.

And then the problem that's specific to Bangkok and many other Asian countries - no city planning. This is evident every day through simple to spot things like traffic jams. But the more serious part of this is that anyone can build whatever he wants anywhere he wants, if he greases the applications a bit. So golf courses, industrial estates and housing estates, condos and roads are built right over the canals that were dug to channel the floodwaters. Even Suvarnabhumi airport is built right in the middle of the swamp that was for a long time used as a runoff storage.

Despite all the suffering of the people from all over the country, Bangkok getting hit is hopefully good for a couple of things:

- maybe, just maybe, people will start considering handling garbage better after seeing all that stuff floating in stinky water they walk through, especially for those in city's markets who are used to dumping all their packaging and waste on the ground or into the canal or drain next to them
- maybe, just maybe, the government will invite the water management experts, including those in private sector, to sit down and make a full water management plan for the whole country, not based on politics and filling pockets, but on providing manageable water levels to the whole country all year round (and that includes not only fighting floods but also drought)
- maybe, the plans are actually put in motion and don't only stay on paper and in computer simulations
- and finally, that the provincial chiefs, instead of only counting the money and showing off their monuments such as new 8 lane roads nobody is using, start taking their own preventive measures in their own provinces and stop blaming Bangkok for all their misery

But that all might be too much to expect here, I guess. So in lieu of that:

- get every kid to mandatory learn to swim when entering elementary school as majority of flood related deaths are children and those who can't swim, and honestly nearly no Thai can, which, with as much water as is surrounding the country, I find odd, to put it mildly.

Apologies to anyone who feels insulted by this post, and good luck and good health to everyone reading it.

SICHONSTEVE, on 2011-11-03 11:01:07, said:

I don't consider it wise, but that's what the situation is right now.

What I was trying to write is that the government is more than just Yingluck, so blame should not only be directed at her but also at the rest of the incompetent people in her government.

Although the buck stops at her desk, Yingluck can't be blamed for everything that has happened.

She's no water management expert. She's no crowd control expert. She's no health or disease control expert.

But people around her should be. And that's the problem.

Appointments were done to thank certain groups for the support in the elections, hence experts in water management who's experience amounts to stopping the flood out of their toilet sink were tasked to fix unprecedented flood situation, which they had no expertise in, so they simply miscalculated the situation badly, feeding wrong information, which resulted in wrong decisions, resulting in wrong, misleading and conflicting information released to the public.

Her tears on TV, no matter how much she denies it, were a sign of helplessness. She has no authority, partly also because her team has done such a lousy job. Then there is political part, where her government is supposed to now show that it is on the side of the upcountry people, not "hi-so", and finally the rule of mob, first demonstrated by yellow shirts, perfected by red shirts, and now used by people living next to barriers - get enough people with sticks to yell your message and you'll get what you want.

So she's really between a rock and a hard place.

I'm no fan of Yingluck, and all but of her brother, however I think people should not personally attack her for all this. The real culprits are actually people hiding behind her, the "seasoned politicians" with years of experience in pocket money management.

It's OK to get Bangkok flooded, so the rest of the country is relieved to see that the burden of floods is being shared.

It will of course be Bangkok commercial centre and airport that are recovered first, before industrial estates currently still dry, before the industrial estates that have already been flooded, before... oh, wait, by that time all the money will already be gone.

Not to mention that the actions of breaking down floodgates and dykes will result in food processing companies to be overflown with filthy water, and will require decontamination and costly equipment repair or replacement, which could take months, before food production can be restarted, leaving poor people in Thailand at the mercy of imported foods at 10x the price.

All that at a few thousand baht hand-out from the government, if any at all.

While I do understand the frustration of the people on the wet side of the barriers, their actions will eventually mostly hurt themselves.