Govt should have tackled flood crisis earlier: experts

 

 “We cannot handle this crisis situation with normal measures,” the deputy director of the Thai Meteorological Department (TMD), Somchai Baimuang, said.

He was speaking at a roundtable discussion organised by Krungthep Turakij newspaper.

 Signs of impending flood crisis had been seen since March when heavy rain began falling in the southern part of Thailand, while other regions faced cold weather even though March is the summer season. 

“This was a 60-year extreme weather event which brought a large amount of rainfall over the country,” he said. 

 “Our agency told the Royal Irrigation Department [RID] in July, before tropical storm Nok-Ten hit the country, there would be abnormal weather this year, and the RID should treat this year’s flood with crisis measures not just normal measures,” he added.

Since early this year, Thailand has been hit by two tropical storms – Hai Ma and Nok-Ten. As a result, a lot of dams – especially big dams such as Bhumibol and Sirikit – were almost full from rainwater and had insufficient capacity to collect water when further heavy rain fell. At the same time, heavy rain was falling outside the dam area and causing floods in many areas. 

“There was no place for the water to go,” he said. 

Thailand has three main rivers to drain water to the sea – the Ta Chin, Chao Phraya and Bang Prakong – but all were swollen to capacity by rainwater.

 “We have to rethink the way we handle flood crisis events – and we have many opportunities every year,” he said.

He suggested agencies encourage members of the public, especially farmers, to change their behaviour on agricultural activities and respond to the changes in weather patterns. 

Urban areas, especially residential and those with infrastructure, should not be established in natural reservoirs and block waterways. 

 “We have to accept that much damage from floods was not caused by heavy rainfall but by human activity,” Somchai said.

He added that TMD can now forecast weather only for 24 hours and with an accuracy of only 79 per cent. It relies on a super computer that was installed 10 years ago for these predictions. 

“If the government wants to achieve weather forecast accuracy, it must allocate more funds to our agency to get the latest weather forecasting with new technology,” he said.

 “How can we fight this enemy in the war [against flooding] without a weapon?” he added.

Associate Professor Adis Israngkura, of the Thailand Development Research Institute, said the government failed to gain the cooperation of all involved parties while dealing with the flood crisis.

 “Thailand’s flood problem was not caused by natural disaster but by the failure of government management,” he said.

“If the government still blames just heavy rain, bad weather or even global warming, it will never know what are the real causes of flood crises,” he added.

Hannarong Yaowalert, president of the Foundation for Integrated Water Management, said the Asian Institute of Technology conducted research 10 years ago which found that road structures were the major cause of the flood crisis in many areas across the country, as many roads blocked the natural flow of water. 

Additionally, residential areas, government buildings and educational institutes were built on natural channels, which originally drained water in flood seasons.

“We spent over Bt1 billion to study and discover how to handle a flood crisis. We already have all the knowledge [we need] about the situation, but we have no-one to make a determination strong enough to solve the problem,” he said.

 “All the government and local governments are doing now is to set up sandbags along rivers and distribute flood relief bags to victims. This is not the right way to deal with floods. It is just another way to create more problems in other areas,” he added.