NationThailand-Sept 29
The intense rainfall over Bangkok and surrounding provinces — widely described in Thai media as a “rain bomb” — has begun to ease, but deep flooding remains in several communities and has renewed scrutiny of the government’s disaster-warning and water-management systems. The flooding has drawn criticism of Prime Minister and Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s administration, particularly over the speed of public warnings and assistance to affected communities. Bangkok recorded close to 300 millimeters of rain over about 48 hours during the worst of the downpour, prompting the city to declare all 50 districts disaster-affected areas. The criticism has focused not on whether authorities could prevent the extreme rainfall itself, but on whether existing forecasts, data, personnel and emergency resources were brought together quickly enough to reduce damage. Deputy Prime Minister Songsak Thongsri, who has chaired meetings of the National Water Resources Committee, had said before the heaviest flooding that heavy rain was expected during September 24–26 but that official assessments did not point to a “mega flood”. He also questioned warnings circulated by some independent pages and said government agencies were prepared to respond.
Unlike the 2011 floods, the latest Bangkok crisis was driven largely by intense local rainfall rather than a major mass of upstream water moving into the capital. Nevertheless, roads, homes and vehicles were flooded across parts of the city, particularly in eastern Bangkok. Part of the attention has turned to Thailand’s recently launched “One Map” water and disaster-information system, which was created specifically to address longstanding problems with fragmented and inconsistent data across government agencies. The government formally launched the system in September after the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation backed an agreement integrating information from four agencies into a single national water and disaster database. Read more at:
