S eeing the devastating flash flood in Chiang Rai’s Mae Sai district unfold over the past week, one wonders if something could have been done to significantly mitigate the death and damages.
This writer is convinced much more can be done.
Let’s start with the most seemingly simple thing – a clear flash flood warning that if locals do not move to safety areas, higher ground and away, along with their vehicles, livestocks, pets, and move their furniture to a much higher ground, they are severely at risk of losing everything.
Watching scenes of people stranded on the rooftop of their homes and buildings and vehicles submerged is heartbreaking. Could more have been done?
On Wednesday, I rang up Pacharapol Prakam, an assistant public relations officer at Mae Sai Municipality Office in Chiang Rai province.
Pacharapol told me there is not enough help to rescue people although one day has passed as of Wednesday since the flash flood began at around 8am Tuesday.
“There’s not enough [rescue] help coming. Not enough soldiers deployed,” he said, adding he saw no rescue helicopter so far although it could make a difference as many are trapped on the roof of their homes and buildings.
“The water arrived so quickly and a dyke [on Mae Sai] river bursted.”
I was focused on what warnings have been given in the days prior to the worst flood in decades there and the 34-year-old man said he and others have been monitoring warnings from local and national offices of the Meteorological Department and did relay warnings to local residents via village headmen but some locals were simply “stubborn” and won’t move their vehicles or evacuate.
That was when I asked if there exists a system of clear warning categorization, like a traffic red light means you must stop or your life could be in peril. Was there anything that can be easily and immediately understood by local villagers and residents that the danger is imminent and immediate actions needed to be taken?
Pacharapol admitted the technical language used by the Meteorological Department lacked simplicity and precision that could be easily and readily grasped by locals and laymen as well.
Asked if there’s any equivalent of a red, yellow and green flags warning potential swimmers at the sea, or a Number designating the severity of typhoons as in Number 1, 2 or 3 as in the Philippines, he said there’s none.
“If there is a colour-coded [for warnings issued by the Department] it would be great. Since it’s not clear, locals were complacent,” he added.
Post flood, he hopes the authority will spend more money to build a proper dyke and not a flimsy one, that could really withstand the force of nature and also build reservoirs and irrigation channels to divert excess water away.
That might be wishful thinking. I later spoke to an old friend from Bangkok who has moved to Chiang Rai City to teach at a local university and married a local and he flatly told me Chiang Rai province, which is a far flung border province, is a low priority from the point of view of those in power in Bangkok.
“This is a bloody border province, not the capital city. You just have to live with it and if you don’t like it then ship out. I have been living in the city for 20 years now and my house only had tap water two years ago.”
He added that Thai big capitalists are planting maize for animal feed on a massive scale on the Myanmar side of the border and will start to slash and burn soon. Come December, PM2.5 will return and he, along with the rest, will have to breathe highly polluted air for three months.
“For three months you just have to inhale the fumes. What do you think? Such a low quality of life,” he told me on Sunday.
Also, the current appointed Chiang Rai governor was transferred from Krabi province a year ago and didn’t know much. He told me Chiang Rai province has been having a new appointed governor almost on a yearly basis.
I have repeatedly said the system of appointed provincial governors is an internal-colonial vestige from the time of King Rama V, over a century ago, when the king centralized the kingdom amidst European colonial threats – basically ending up making the rest of Thailand an internal colony of Bangkok.
Asked if he would rather prefer having an elected governor instead he said no, adding politicians are too politicised to carry out works. This is where we disagree but I told him to stay safe and denate dried food and rice that he hoard to those in need in Chiang Rai.
