Thai­land Floods – Update 2
Severe flood­ing that has claimed the lives of over 370 lives in less than three months is now clos­ing in on the cap­i­tal Bangkok as the author­i­ties strug­gle to divert as much water as pos­si­ble around the city and rein­force bar­ri­ers to keep remain­ing areas dry.
But accord­ing to Tony Waltham, HS0ZDX, for many areas to the north of the cap­i­tal it is too late and hun­dreds of com­mu­ni­ties there are unin­hab­it­able with flood water more than two or three metres deep in some areas.
Under water is agri­cul­tur­al land reduc­ing the crop yield, fac­to­ries caus­ing sus­pen­sions or dis­rup­tions, and hous­ing. The eco­nom­ic cost is put at $3 bil­lion. The heavy mon­soon ear­li­er rain hit Cam­bo­dia, Viet­nam, Laos and the Philippines.
Ama­teur radio has been play­ing an ongo­ing role in this dis­as­ter with oper­a­tors help­ing to co-ordi­nate relief and res­cue work using VHF two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tions and repeaters, HF com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the 40 metre band (7060–7063 KHz).
As well there are sev­er­al Echolink con­fer­ence rooms, includ­ing the “Bangkok”, “Thai­land” and “HS0AC” con­fer­ences. (A list of VHF fre­quen­cies and repeaters can be found at the RAST web­site http://www.qsl.net/rast).
Tony HS0ZDX reports a spe­cial cen­tre for ama­teur radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions has been estab­lished by Thailand’s reg­u­la­tor, the Nation­al Broad­cast­ing and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (NBTC) using the call­sign HS0AB at Bangkok’s sec­ond air­port, Don Mueang, which is now besieged by flood­ing itself.
Among the areas inun­dat­ed by more than a metre of water is the cam­pus of the Asian Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, where the Radio Ama­teur Soci­ety of Thailand’s HF club and con­test sta­tion HS0AC is located.
Sad­ly, all the trans­ceivers and equip­ment at desk­top lev­el or high­er, are now sub­merged under flood water.
Anoth­er vic­tim of the flood­ing was a RAST-spon­sored FCC Vol­un­teer Exam­in­er Co-ordi­na­tor (VEC) exam ses­sion that had been sched­uled for Octo­ber 22 and had to be can­celled, despite 35 can­di­dates hav­ing registered.
The amount of rain­fall in Thai­land since July has been unprece­dent­ed. Based on gov­ern­ment fig­ures the total runoff from a series of trop­i­cal storms is now esti­mat­ed to com­prise around 20,000 mil­lion cubic metres of water.
More than half this vol­ume still to make its way through rivers, canals and pump­ing sta­tions past Bangkok to reach the Gulf of Thailand.
It has been esti­mat­ed that between 400 and 500 mil­lion cubic metres can be drained each day, which means that the ongo­ing cri­sis is like­ly to last at least anoth­er 20 days, if there is no more heavy rain­fall — how­ev­er, the rainy sea­son has not yet ended.
Adding to the threat lev­el for the remain­ing dry areas in the cap­i­tal city over the next few days are a series of peak sea tides fore­cast for Octo­ber 30 and Octo­ber 31 that should cause riv­er lev­els to rise even high­er than their record lev­els at present.
More than 10 mil­lion peo­ple have been direct­ly affect­ed by flood­ing so far, while the Thai Gov­ern­ment has been encour­ag­ing res­i­dents of Bangkok, which has a pop­u­la­tion of some 12 mil­lion, to evac­u­ate if pos­si­ble and to move their valu­ables upstairs as a pre­cau­tion, while a pub­lic hol­i­day has been declared for 21 provinces from Octo­ber 27–31.
Many indus­tri­al parks north of Bangkok have been inun­dat­ed despite all attempts to keep flood water at bay and this has seri­ous­ly dis­rupt­ed Thailand’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and has also caused sup­ply chain short­ages for in sev­er­al industries.
Most of Bangkok is low-lying, being just one metre or less above sea lev­el, while Thailand’s Prime Min­is­ter Yingluck Shi­nawa­tra has pre­dict­ed that the floods will take from four to six weeks to recede.
Peo­ple are also being asked to boil tap water as flood water briefly breached the canal that pro­vides the city with its drink­ing water and bot­tled water is now in short sup­ply in shops and depart­ment stores around Bangkok.
Tony HS0ZDX describes it as a time of uncer­tain­ty for most res­i­dents of Bangkok, although he remains pro­tect­ed for the moment.
— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mit­tee, and Tony Waltham, HS0ZDX RAST Inter­na­tion­al and IARU Liaison.