Thailand fought to hold back floodwaters flowing towards Bangkok Saturday as a spring tide hindered efforts to protect the city of 12 million people from the kingdom’s worst inundation in decades.
Inner Bangkok, which is ringed by floodwalls, has so far escaped major flooding, leaving areas outside the main city to bear the brunt of the rising waters.
“We must try to protect our economic zone including Bangkok, Suvarnabhumi Airport, industrial areas and evacuation centres,” said Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Sandbags have been piled alongside rivers and canals and the authorities have been racing to repair a dyke that burst on Thursday, causing a brief scare in suburbs in the north of the capital.
The floods, several metres deep in places, are currently affecting about one third of Thailand’s provinces and have damaged the homes or livelihoods of millions of people and left at least 297 people dead. About 110,000 people around the country have sought refuge in shelters in the face of waters that have destroyed crops and inundated hundreds of factories in industrial parks north of Bangkok.
“People have been affected by floods for three months now. The government understands that and is trying to drain the water as soon as possible,” Yingluck said. “This incident is one of Thailand’s biggest and most severe losses in history. The government will not forget the people’s grievances.”
She said foreign governments including China, Japan and the United States were giving financial or logistical support for the relief operations.
The United States sent a military transport aircraft from Japan carrying thousands of sandbags and 10 US Marines as part of a survey team to assess how to help Thailand cope with the flooding, the US embassy said.
The US was also understood to have agreed in principle to send 26 helicopters to help search for stranded victims.
Conditions in inner Bangkok and at most of Thailand’s top tourist destinations were mostly normal and Suvarnabhumi Airport — the capital’s main air hub, which has floodwalls several metres high — was operating as usual.
