Flooding in parts of Chao Phraya basin

An overflow from the Chao Phraya in Angthong province resulted in water up to 80 centimetres deep flooding 82 homes in Pa Moke district’s Tambon Phong Pheng and Muang district’s Tambon Jampa Lor.

In Pa Moke’s Tambon Phong Pheng, mushroom farmer Surin Chaba, 55, lamented that the pre-dawn flood rose so fast she could not save her crop.

The Chao Phraya also burst its banks in Ayutthaya’s Muang district and inundated shops at Wat Tha Ka Rong’s riverside market yesterday.

In Lop Buri’s Ban Mi district, farmers in Tambon Phukha said some 1,000 rai (160 hectares) of rice paddy was damaged by metre-deep floodwater that had inundated the area for three days.

In Pathum Thani province, residents moved belongings to higher ground yesterday after officials warned that the Chao Phraya would rise by another 90 centimetres.

However Pathum Thani irrigation project director Chuchat Supawattanangkoon said the amount of water passing through Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani would be at a controllable level of 1.6 metres. Officials had prepared water pumps and other emergency flood measures just in case, Chuchat said.

The release of water from the Chao Phraya Dam in Chai Nat was set to be hiked to 1,800 cubic metres per second last night.

In Chaiyaphum in the Northeast, three days of heavy rain caused the vast 18,000-rai Bung Lahan Lake to burst its banks, inundating some 600 homes in four villages in Chatturat district with floodwater up to two metres deep and threatening to spread further.

Some 5,000 rai of farmland in the province’s Nong Bua Rawe district was also inundated by runoff from the Khao Pang Heuy forest.