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| People dine out by the riverbank near the government office complex in downtown Nakhon Sawan. Life has returned to normal for residents as the severe floods which devastated much of the province have receded. |
The 18 days of flooding endured by the town of Nakhon Sawan spurred a powerful movement of social networking and showed that civil society can work well on flood relief operations.
They helped the city quickly return to normalcy in the span of a mere two weeks.
The floods which hit the provincial municipality more than a month ago were so serious that no dry space was left in the town.
The sudden overflow of water over the river embankment forced more than 10,000 people to evacuate to 27 evacuation centres on nearby hills.
The situation in the municipality now has returned to normal. All shops selling moji _ traditional sweet bean cakes _ have reopened and they are teeming with customers buying them as gifts for friends and family.
"We have to give credit to the people of Nakhon Sawan who are business-minded. The faster they can resume business operations, the more they can limit the damage caused by the floods," said Janya Kwangkaeo, a member of Nakhon Sawan Forum, one of more than 10 civil stakeholders that worked on the flood relief operation.
"During the flood crisis, you rarely saw a white collar worker carrying sand bags to fix water barriers.
"We did it in Nakhon Sawan. We have strong cooperation in the community, which is the secret to our success," she said.
The cooperation also extended through social networks. Eleven residents set up a water monitoring group in Nakhon Sawan on Facebook. The number of followers increased to more than 14,000, most of them Nakhon Sawan natives.
Assachai Phitcharoenporn, 30, who helped start the Facebook page, said he initially intended to update and share information about the floods with friends.
He wanted to tell them where the floods had hit and the level of the water in different places and to inform road users how to avoid flooded areas.
Some of them later posted video clips on the webpage, which finally drew the attention of others living in Nahon Sawan.
"More and more people came to our Facebook page and shared information on the flood. We had senior police officers, doctors and officials, including the mayor, join our Facebook. That made our information even more credible," he said.
The Facebook page was finally turned into a portal for rescue operations after members started posting messages for help.
The moderators of the page worked as coordinators to contact people who had direct authority to deal with the problem and most of them were friends on Facebook. As a result, they were able to rapidly send assistance to people in need.
Although the flood crisis is over, the Facebook page is still active as a social media tool, providing useful information for people living in the province.
Political comments are banned to prevent them from muddying the real purpose of the page.
Adisak Chantavichanuwong, a local civil society coordinator, said civil groups from such sectors as community development, business, academic and media also formed the Civil Centre for the Flood Victims to distribute relief supplies, evacuate people and run a hot line service for people to call for assistance and information.
The group measured the level of water using GPS tools, drew up emergency plans in case dykes were breached and provided information to people living in the city.
They also monitored the water level at Bhumipol, Sirikit and Kwae Noi dams on a daily basis.
But, after withstanding the flood for two months, the city's flood barrier finally collapsed in the middle of October, causing the river to overflow and flood the city.
The municipality deployed 700 water pumps and it took 10 days to drain the water from the town and allow people to start the clean up work.
Compared with the government's Flood Relief Operation Command, Mr Adisak said residents were more effective in fighting the flood as there was no politics involved in the operation and they could just get the job done.
He said the group had a well-managed plan. It met twice a day to fix the weak points in their work while the Froc did not seem to have any strategy to deal with the problems.
"In fact, the government should have drawn up plans to fight the disaster before it started. The signs of the disaster were the heavy rains. But the government did nothing and let the disaster take its course."
Nakhon Sawan has reported flood damage of 10 billion baht. Of this sum, 4 billion baht was in the municipality alone.
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