Lessons must be learned from flood disaster

Although the flooding has been going on for two months now, no one can predict how it’s going to end. On Monday, more than 200,000 people were told to evacuate from Nava Nakorn Industrial Estate, even though the government had earlier assured workers and the public that the estate would be safe from flooding. The massive evacuation created chaotic scenes after the Flood Relief Operations Centre (FROC) ordered industrial plants at the estate to cease operations and send workers home.

The ongoing historic flooding has caused massive damage to the tune of Bt170 billion so far. It has affected more than 2 million households and everyone from farmers to businessmen.

While many have been stunned at the magnitude of this flood disaster, the inundation should not come as a surprise. After all, this is a natural phenomenon that happens regularly – admittedly more often over the past few years.

The Thai government and responsible agencies really need to come up with better and sustainable plans to deal with water management, instead of blaming the annual heavy rainfall – which we well know will occur anyway. Have we not learned anything from centuries of experience of our tropical monsoon climate?

City planning must start to take into account the topography of Thailand, which is vulnerable to flooding. Unfortunately, the failure to recognise the inherent physical features of the land – and the problems they can cause – has in turn caused disruption to the natural waterways. Some natural water retention and disbursement areas have been turned into roads or housing estates. This massive flooding should remind us of the need to revise urban planning to ensure that Thailand has sufficient waterways to release water during the monsoon season.

In addition, a serious effort should be taken to prevent further encroachment of forest areas. Regrettably, Thailand has seen many of its forests destroyed for commercial uses. A series of recent allegations over the misuse of land and forest encroachment at Suan Puang and Wang Nam Keaw is a reminder of the damaging consequences that forest destruction can cause.

A national centre to deal with and organise responses to natural disasters should be established immediately to coordinate efforts from all stakeholders involved. Each group of stakeholders will have different interests in flooding issues. For instance, irrigation officers can be slow in releasing water from dams because their interest is to ensure sufficient levels of water to prevent drought. Provincial leaders will naturally try to protect their constituencies by refusing to open flood gates to prevent water from flowing into their districts. 

This massive flooding will leave a feeling of resentment from people in affected areas. This has already been seen in a series of conflicts between local people and officials trying to protect dykes in some areas. After the water recedes, the remedy process should include an effort to create correct understanding among people over the cause of floods. A central organisation that can help balance the interests of all parties should be in control to make the critical decisions, instead of leaving the matter to be decided arbitrarily by local authorities. 

In addition, the government should help provinces update their water management systems. The ongoing deluge shows that some provinces have been heavily affected because their dykes are made of clay and can be breached easily.

Thailand has, over the past few years, seen much damage caused by natural disasters – from the 2004 tsunami to mudslides, droughts and regular flooding. However, the decision-makers in the government don’t have the awareness or ability to systematically cope with these disasters. While it is impossible to resist the force of Mother Nature, we can mitigate the negative effects by preparing how to deal with these calamities as well as providing quick assistance to the victims. 

The effort from the non-governmental sector, including private companies and educational institutions, to help the victims by providing food and shelter is admirable. But the government must do more to coordinate these efforts to ensure the assistance reaches the most desperate victims first.

 This flooding should teach us many lessons. Otherwise, we will again be forced to be defensive whenever a crisis on this scale happens. Thailand, it seems, will always face annual natural disasters, but we are still woefully unprepared. When will we wake up to this fact?