‘Mob Rule’ Threatens Bangkok With Floods: Governor

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Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra warned against succumbing to “mob rule” in managing floodwaters on the city’s outskirts, saying the entire country will suffer if waters inundate central business areas.

“It’s no good if we decide to do something either by ourselves or in tandem with the government, and then allow people to change our policy on the ground,” Sukhumbhand said in an interview yesterday. “We cannot give in to mob rule.”

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra yesterday ordered city officials to allow more water to flow through the Sam Wa canal, appeasing thousands of residents who have held protests in the flooded northeastern part of the capital. Most of Bangkok will be spared from severe flooding as water moves through the city’s canals toward the Gulf of Thailand, 30 kilometers (19 miles) to the south of the city, she said.

Maintaining the strength of dikes, canals and sandbag barriers on the city’s outskirts is key to protecting inner Bangkok from floodwaters that spread over 63 of Thailand’s 77 provinces over the past three months. The central bank last week slashed its economic growth forecast for 2011 to 2.9 percent from 4.1 percent after floods swamped almost 10,000 factories and threatened to seep into the capital.

Sam Wa canal is north of Bang Chun and Lat Krabang industrial estates, home to factories operated by Honda Motor Co., Unilever and Cadbury Plc, and connects to the Saen Saeb canal that runs near downtown business areas. Honda, Japan’s third-largest car maker, abandoned its full-year profit forecasts yesterday, saying the company can’t yet assess the financial toll of the floods that have already shut one factory.

Who Will Suffer?

“We need to educate people that where flooding is concerned it’s not a zero-sum game,” said Sukhumbhand, a member of the opposition Democrat party. “If Bangkok is crippled, the economy will be crippled. If the economy is crippled, who will suffer most? Certainly not big businesses, but the ordinary people, the workers, the people who send their money home to the provinces.”

The Democrat party won 23 of 33 seats in Bangkok during July elections, while Yingluck’s Pheu Thai party won nine of 10 seats in Pathum Thani and Ayutthaya provinces directly north of the capital, where flooding has reached as high as 3 meters (9.8 feet). Parties linked to Yingluck’s brother, former leader Thaksin Shinawatra, have won the past five elections on support from the northeast, the most populous region where incomes are a third of those in Bangkok.

Water Negotiations
“We negotiated with the residents and agreed to open the gate by 1 meter,” Yingluck said. “We will try to slow down the amount of water and control the water through other gates.”

The decision about which sluice gates to open is made by a committee comprised of members of the government’s flood-control center, city officials, the Irrigation Department and academics, Wim Roongwatanachinda, a spokesman for the Flood Relief Operations Command, said yesterday by phone.

“We opened the flood gate earlier by 80 centimeters and it’s not flooding, so we think we can handle 20 centimeters more,” he said. “What we do, we can explain. There is always an impact on both sides when we open the gate.”

Yingluck ordered Sukhumbhand to open sluice gates in Sam Wa canal yesterday, Jate Sopitpongstorn, a spokesman for the governor, said by phone today.

Rainfall about 42 percent more than average this year filled dams north of Bangkok to capacity, prompting authorities to release more than 9 billion cubic meters of water down a river basin the size of Florida, with Bangkok at the bottom.

Sluice Gate ‘Myth’
Sukhumbhand, who heads the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, rejected criticism that flooding north of the city was made worse because city officials waited too long to open Bangkok’s canal system. Bangkok and its vicinity account for about half of Thailand’s industrial output, according to government statistics.

“This is a myth made up for political reasons,” he said. “We have opened the gates as wide as possible for a very long time and many people in the government found to their surprise that the sluice gates which remained closed were not those of the BMA, but of the Irrigation Department.”

Flooding in the capital is mainly limited to northern and eastern areas and low-lying places near canals, while the business districts of Silom and lower Sukhumvit remain dry and the Suvarnabhumi Airport and public transport links are unaffected. Authorities are still concerned about northern and western districts including Don Mueang, Laksi and Thonburi, where levees are blocking water from flowing into the inner city.

Swamped Airplanes
Yesterday at Don Mueang, Bangkok’s old international airport and the former headquarters of the government’s flood- relief effort, Thai Airways International Pcl (THAI) jets were parked next to a meter of water spreading across the runway. Several planes sat on the tarmac with water up to their wings.

On the Thonburi side of the Chao Phraya River, opposite the tourist site of the Grand Palace, residents waded through waist- deep water past submerged cars and food stalls. Small boats ferried residents from a bridge to their submerged homes, past people in kayaks that slowly drifted through the brown water choked with plastic bags.

“Many people are suffering very badly and unless and until we have the means to help them fully, unless we have the opportunity to restore them to their normal lives, we cannot say everything is back to normal,” Sukhumbhand said. “Obviously the psychological damage can never be assessed properly.”

source : bloomberg

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Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra ordered police to protect a levee on the city’s outskirts after thousands of people damaged the floodgate, threatening inner parts of the Thai capital.

“The gate needs to be urgently fixed otherwise the floodwater would cause heavy flooding” in eastern Bangkok near industrial estates where international manufacturers are located, he said on his website last night. “There are a number of people who are trying to obstruct the fixing of the floodgate.”

Residents living near Sam Wa canal in northeastern Bangkok destroyed part of a levee so water would flow out of their neighborhood, television images on the Thai PBS television channel showed. The canal is north of Bang Chun and Lat Krabang industrial estates, home to factories operated by Honda Motor Co., Unilever and Cadbury Plc, and connects to a canal that runs near downtown business areas.

Bangkok officials are struggling to maintain a system of dikes, canals and sandbag barriers designed to divert water around the city center. Floodwaters that spread over 63 of Thailand’s 77 provinces over the past three months have killed 427 people and shuttered 10,000 factories north of Bangkok, disrupting supply chains across Asia.

Forecast Slashed
The Bank of Thailand, which last week slashed its 2011 economic growth forecast to 2.6 percent from 4.1 percent, expects expansion to slow as the global economy weakens and the impact of the nation’s flood crisis increases, according to the minutes of its Oct. 19 meeting released today. Thailand’s inflation rate held above 4 percent for the seventh straight month in October as food costs climbed, government data released yesterday show.

Members of the Bank of Thailand’s Monetary Policy Committee “were concerned about the impact of the still-evolving flood situation, especially on production in key export sectors including rice, automobile, electronics and electrical appliances, as well as tourism, all of which were already feeling the effects of a weaker global economy,” said the minutes.

Emerson Electric Co. (EMR), a U.S. maker of electrical products, will see “more significant” supply disruptions from the Thai floods than from Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Chief Executive Officer David Farr said on a conference call yesterday. Honda, Japan’s third-largest carmaker, abandoned its full-year profit forecast earlier this week on the floods.

45 Days
Thailand’s government said yesterday it may need 45 days to pump water out of seven inundated industrial estates. It will start with Rojana industrial estate in Ayutthaya province on Nov. 7, Permanent Secretary for Industry Witoon Simachokedee said earlier this week.

“After that we will send technicians to check out damage to machinery,” Industry Minister Wannarat Charnnukul told reporters. “For the remaining estates that are not flooded, we have already prepared measures to protect them and we believe they won’t be flooded.”

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra ordered the evacuation of eastern parts of Bangkok near the Sam Wa canal yesterday on the risk of flooding, said Thongtong Chantarangsu, a spokesman for the government’s flood relief operations. In western parts of the city, “the flooding has spread and risen,” he said in a national broadcast last night.

Lower Tides
Still, lower tides have allowed more water to drain through the city’s canals toward the Gulf of Thailand, 30 kilometers (19 miles) to the south, Thongtong said.

“The amount of floodwater coming into Bangkok has declined,” he said. “This is a very good sign.”

Flooding in the capital is mainly limited to northern and eastern areas and low-lying places near canals, while the business districts of Silom and lower Sukhumvit remain dry, and Suvarnabhumi Airport and public transport links are unaffected. Shortages of bottled water, eggs and instant noodles have eased after retailers imported products, Permanent Secretary for Commerce Yanyong Phuangrach said yesterday.

Rainfall about 42 percent more than average this year filled dams north of Bangkok to capacity, prompting authorities to release more than 9 billion cubic meters of water down a river basin the size of Florida, with Bangkok at the bottom.

The death toll from the disaster rose to 427 today, according to the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation. Twenty-six provinces are still affected by flooding, the agency said on its website.