Crocs and cobras lurk in homes as Thai floods recede

Two men carry a crocodile caught and killed in Nonthaburi.

BANGKOK: People returning to homes in the Thai capital as record floods recede are finding crocodiles and snakes have moved in.

Teams from the Thai Fishery Department have caught at least 10 crocodiles since the country's worst flooding in more than half a century began in July.

Volunteer veterinarians have found cobras and rescued pet lions, tigers and bears from the homes of rich Thais.

The floods are receding after killing more than 600 people over vast areas of the kingdom, but for many the misery continues. Arunee Ninkaew's Bangkok home is now a putrid grey breeding ground for insects.

Weeks of living above the stagnant, foul-smelling floodwater, crammed into a single upstairs room with her diabetic husband, elderly mother-in-law and grandson, have left her in despair. 

She wakes each morning with the same feeling of hopelessness: "I think to myself, 'When? When will the water go?"'

The streets around her home in the district of Don Mueang are still under a meter of green water strewn with floating rubbish and glistening with petrol. The only way to get around is by boat.

Some sluice gates to be opened wider

Flood Relief Operation Centre yesterday responded to a request that the sluice gates of a number of canals be opened wider in order to ease the flood woes of Nonthaburi residents.

The Maha Sawat Canal gate, for example, will now be opened to a width of 1 metre, against the previous 50 centimeters.

The Maha Sawat Canal gate, for example, will now be opened to a width of 1 metre, against the previous 50 centimetres.

The governor said the opening of the sluice gates of Bang Or and Bang Phlat canals would also be allowed, so as to take more water from Nonthaburi into Bangkok.

With the severe flooding having dragged on for months, many victims have been trying to negotiate for an opportunity to drain flood water out of their areas sooner rather than later.

Thousands of Nonthaburi residents recently gathered to press for their leaders to negotiate with Sukhumbhand.

The Bangkok governor yesterday responded positively to their request, but was unable to meet all their demands.

He explained that opening the Thawi Watthana Canal sluice gate to a width of 1 metre was not possible, and that it would be left at 50cm instead.

"We have to take into account western Bangkok's water-drainage capacity," he added.

In a related development, more than 30 representatives of people in Bangkok's Don Mueang and Lak Si districts, as well as Pathum Thani residents, yesterday met with Flood Relief Operations Centre (FROC) officials for about an hour to press their demands. Their communities have been heavily flooded for more than one month.

One of the flood victims' representatives, Pongthep Sirisap, later confirmed the FROC had agreed to build a new flood wall under the Rangsit Bridge.

The new wall will stretch for 1.5 kilometres along the Rangsit Canal from Saipanya Rangsit School to the Chualongkorn sluice gate.

"The FROC has also promised to urgently drain flood water out of our areas within seven days," Pongthep said.

He added that the agency would provide 10 pumps for his group's immediate use in pushing the run-off water into Premprachakorn Canal.

Anond Snidvong, who represented the FROC at the meeting, said: "We are doing everything for the maximum public benefit and are proceeding in line with proper principles. 

We will do what we can for people, but we have to do it at the right time, too."

He said he believed the flood crisis was already in its final phase. The flood-management mission was already 90-per-cent complete, he added.

Anond also believed that flood water in western Bangkok will |subside within a few weeks.

Deputy Bangkok Governor Thirachon Manomaipiboon, meanwhile, expects inundation in the capital, including the heavily flooded Sai Mai and Don Muang districts, will end within seven days.

Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Yongyuth Wichaidit said he would talk today to Sukhumbhand to discuss |remedial measures to assist flood-hit people.

Yongyuth met the Nonthaburi provincial governor yesterday. Asked about Nonthaburi residents' demands that their hometowns |be declared special flood-hit |zones, so as to claim extra compensation and help, 

he merely said: "I cannot disclose details now. There will be a screening committee to consider the extra remedial measures."

The flood victims from Bangkok's Don Muang and Lak Si districts, as well as those from Pathum Thani, want the government to compensate them for 50 per cent of their actual damages, but not exceeding Bt500,000 per household.

Conflict over barriers a sign of divide

The recent deployment of the big-bag dyke by the government has come to represent a very visible aspect of a top-down, centralized approach that ignores the issues of justice and fairness.

The big bag flood-wall has become a symbol of what is wrong and unjust about Thailand's national development over the past decades.

Since Sunday, a few groups of disgruntled residents who are negatively affected because they live on the "wrong" side of the flood-wall have decided to protest and destroy some of the one-tonne bags and no one knows when such actions will cease for good.

The Yingluck Shinawatra administration and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration have failed utterly to articulate or explain the need for people on the other side to accept more water in order to save inner Bangkok.

Out of the blue, one day authorities just decided that big bags will be the saviour of the inner city and the unlucky folks outside the barriers will just have to put up with more water.

This happened with no advance consultation and no fair compensation being offered from the outset.

It took weeks before people in both the fringes of Bangkok like Don Muang and north of Bangkok in Pathum Thani's Lam Luk Ka district to decide that they had been unfairly made to sacrifice in silence and that they must do something about it.

Prior to that most of the Bangkok-based national media paid little or no interest in the justice and fairness issues of the big bags, that is, until the big bags were removed or destroyed, threatening the inner city with a deluge.

Yes, society can't exist as a society if its members are unwilling to sacrifice when there's a need to save the majority or the strategic parts of society.

But again, there can be no society when people who are not regarded as important are neglected and forced to endure more suffering and hardships without justice and fairness so that the rich people in the central part of the capital can go on enjoying their lives as usual.

The lesson of the big bag conflict is that Thai society is fragmented and not democratic or just enough in seeking solutions.

Earlier this week, when the big bags were first dismantled by angry residents in the Don Muang area, the Post Today newspaper was quick to run a scary main front-page headline stating, "Fallen Heaven" (sawan loem).

This suggests that Bangkok is heaven while the rest may not be as celestial and those outside Bangkok may see it differently.

Although the news pictures of people taking matters into their own hands and defying the authorities' "solution" are disturbing to many, they can also be interpreted as ordinary folks increasingly rejecting top-down government "solutions" that they have no say in.

They could even be considered a positive sign for the future of participatory democracy.

The authorities will have to adapt and come up with a more convincing solution that takes the interests of not just the central business district of Bangkok into consideration if they're to avoid more resistance.

The centralization of Bangkok as a primate city which dominates the rest of the Kingdom will also have to be reviewed as more and more people are saying they will not accept the idea of unconditionally placing Bangkok above the rest at all cost as it was clearly shown in the conflict.

The claim that since Bangkok is the center of virtually everything, it must be saved and receive more preferential treatment than others, is in a way an unjust and self-perpetuating remark if it comes without a genuine attempt to decentralize power and wealth to other parts of the country.

Such a ethos has increasingly become the very thing that generates resentment.

RESIDENTS THREATEN PROTESTS, FORCE OPEN WALL TO RELEASE WATER

Big bag barrier under threat

RESIDENTS THREATEN PROTESTS, FORCE OPEN WALL TO RELEASE WATER

The government's big bag barrier, credited with sparing inner Bangkok from flooding, is under threat.

A workman wrestles one of the huge Big Bag sandbags into line.

Residents of Don Muang district say the barrier is prolonging flooding in their area, and are threatening protest action.

They demand the government say how much longer they will have to live with the floodwater.

Thinnakorn Janya, head of the residents of Yucharoen housing estate, said he and 20 community leaders from nearby estates will meet at 9am today to discuss what action to take.

They are considering three options: blocking the Don Muang Tollway, holding a prolonged protest on the crest of the barrier, or rallying outside parliament.

The leaders will vote at today's meeting to decide which of these measures to take.

Mr Thinnakorn said residents wanted the government to come up with an action plan to ease flooding in their areas where the big bag barrier, built from sandbags weighing 2.5 tonnes each, has retained floodwater for many days.

"They are swamping us with water. If we weren't in such despair, we wouldn't be shouting for help," he said.

Mr Thinnakorn said the government must clarify the amount of time it would take to pump out water inside the barrier.

"When will our area be dry again? We've been underwater for three weeks now," he said. Mr Thinnakorn discounted claims by local MP Karun Hosakul of the ruling Pheu Thai Party that only 10,000 people live inside the barrier.

Mr Karun yesterday met Flood Relief Operation Commands (Froc) chief Pracha Promnok to discuss the residents' complaint following a report that up to 80,000 people had signed a petition demanding the big bags' removal.

He claimed that only 10,000 people had signed the petition.

Mr Thinnakorn said that number referred only to those officially registered as householders of each property, but in reality many more share the homes.

Mr Karun said many residents in the district have endured suffering as a result of the installation of the big bags.

The big bag barrier has formed a vast belt encompassing 20 residential estates along the northern railway line and across Don Mueang airport and parts of Phahon Yothin Road.

The authorities insisted the big bags helped slow water flowing into the city from the North, granting the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) enough time to drain water from the canals that protect inner Bangkok.

The erection of the big bag barrier, however, provoked an angry response from communities surrounded by it.

The pressure prompted authorities to remove some bags and make a gap of two metres in the barrier to release water. The gap was later widened to six metres. However, yesterday the gap was sealed.

Mr Thinnakorn said it was unclear who closed the gap.

He and about 200 residents worked to open the gap back to six metres again with their bare hands yesterday in the presence of police and soldiers.

The water behind the barrier was 60cm higher than water outside it.

Mr Thinnakorn insisted the residents were not pressing to have the barrier removed.

Rather, the authorities should map out a blueprint to control water flow from North and siphon water from housing estates by, for example, creating small gaps at intervals along the barrier.

The barrier should also be built in a chamber system so the water could be better manipulated.

He said authorities lack an integrated flood management plan, which left some areas inundated for extended periods.

Mr Thinnakorn said the big bags restricted people's freedom of mobility, which is against the law.

"Our boats can't get past the bags and boats are the people's only mode of transport around here," he added.

Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra said the big bags were an effective water management tool, but he was concerned some residents might dismantle the barrier if the floods became too much to bear.

However, he would discuss with the Froc if it was still necessary to keep the big bag barrier.

Seri Suparathit, a water expert at Rangsit University, said the BMA has enough capacity to pump out water and save the inner city even if the gap in the barrier was opened over its entire length.