Flooded Bangkok residents still cut off from aid

Commuters wait to board a truck to take them through flooded area in Bangkok November 10, 2011.

Brownish, stagnant water rises to waist height, lapping at the front of houses and leaving dark stains on the walls. The only way for people to leave is to take a rickety boat to the main road, where more floods await.

It's been two weeks since resident Kanyanee Ounsri and her husband last worked. Floods have forced the 31-year-old and her Cambodian husband, a clothes seller, to stay put deep inside a long and narrow street, south of Bangkok’s old Don Muang airport.

"Even if my husband could go to the market to sell the clothes, it is under water," Kanyanee told AlertNet. Her job as a seamstress is gone too, she said.

"We used to get about 700 baht (about $23) a day between us working," she added, holding her six-month-old son, while her husband looked on silently.

"We are now quite worried because we have been using our savings... after the water is gone and the recovery starts, maybe we would have to borrow some money to get by."

There has been much fretting over whether or not inner Bangkok will remain flood-free, the inundation of seven industrial sites and the massive losses Japanese investors have suffered - some say they are the biggest since the Second World War even taking into account Japan’s recent earthquake and tsunami.

But aid agencies say the authorities should not forget ordinary people like Kanyanee when Thailand recovers from its worst floods in recent memory.

On Thursday, Kanyanee's family and 300 other households in her street received their first relief items since the floods began. They have come from the Red Cross, courtesy of a donation from the European Union.

LIVING WITH STAGNANT WATER

On a normal day it takes less than an hour to drive from Bangkok's business district to Kanyanee's street, but on Thursday the journey required three types of transport - a van, an army truck and a boat - and took more than two hours.

Although some families have evacuated their homes and are sheltering in empty flats nearby, many others have refused to leave, choosing instead to stay on the second floor of their houses.

Locals are getting around in boats, which range from small bamboo rafts to some made out of thick Styrofoam. Others wait at flooded bus stops for transport provided by the military or aid groups.

Reaching all those who are not in evacuation centers is a major challenge, Pichit Siriwan, deputy director of relief and community health bureau for the Thai Red Cross, told AlertNet.

"In some areas access is getting better but in some areas it is getting worse... we have tried our best but there are some areas that are inaccessible," he said. 

Every morning, we send out more than 10 high trucks, some of them carrying a flat bottom boat so in places where the truck cannot go, the boat can."

Save the Children's spokesperson Annie Bodmer-Roy said the charity had to turn back from visiting an area because of fast-rising waters a few days ago.

"It is extremely frustrating because you know people need these hygiene kits, that some people couldn't brush their teeth because they haven't got soap or toothbrush," she said.

For now, having access to clean drinking water is "the most serious problem", Pichit said.

The Red Cross is also concerned about migrant workers, he added. "Some of them don't have any documentations and nobody knows how many there are and where they are. We are trying to locate them," he said.