The complex network of flood defenses erected to shield Thailand’s capital from the country’s worst floods in nearly 60 years was set for one of its biggest tests yet Saturday as coastal high tides approached their peak.
High tides expected to crest Saturday morning were pushing the city’s main waterway, the Chao Phraya river, to its brink. Overflows so far have lightly inundated riverside streets from Chinatown to the white-walled royal Grand Palace and the neighboring Temple of the Emerald Buddha.
Amid heightened fears that floodwaters could swamp Bangkok, saffron-robed monks and soldiers piled sandbags outside the city’s most treasured temples and palaces Friday as the Chao Phraya swelled precariously beyond its banks, spilling ankle-high water briefly into some of the main tourist districts.
Most of the water has receded at low tide. Still, some worried Bangkokians are buying up bright orange lifejackets and inflatable boats, fearing the worst is yet to come.
“You have to prepare,” said Fon Kanokporn, a banker who bought a rubber boat from a store that had several hanging as advertisements from trees out front.
Employees at the shop said they had sold well over 3,000 boats in the last week. The brisk business is a measure of the fear gripping Bangkok and a reflection of the tragedy of neighbouring provinces that have been submerged for weeks. Several buyers said they needed boats because their submerged homes outside the capital were no longer accessible by road.
Three months of relentless monsoon rains have caused the worst flooding in Thailand in more than half a century, triggering a national crisis that has overwhelmed Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s government.
The water has crept from the central plains south toward the Gulf of Thailand for weeks, engulfing a third of the country and killing nearly 400 people and displacing 110,000 more. Now, Bangkok is in the way surrounded by behemoth pools of water flowing around and through the city via a complex network of canals and rivers.
The government is worried that major barriers and dikes could break because they were not designed to hold back so much water for so long. And this weekend, higher than normal tides are obstructing the critical flow of runoff from the north, fuelling fears that parts of downtown Bangkok could be swamped.
On Friday, army trucks dumped thousands of sandbags outside the riverside Siriraj Hospital, where Thailand’s ailing and revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej has stayed since 2009.
Elsewhere along the Chao Phraya, dozens of monks at the 200-year-old Temple of the Dawn stacked hundreds more along a secondary barrier to protect against river overflows.
“It’s likely going to get higher, but I don’t think its going to get high enough to cause chaos,” said Phramaha Abhin, a 42-year-old monk. Still, he said, “we cannot neglect the risk to this temple. It’s one of the country’s landmarks, one of the things Thailand is known for. We have to protect it.”
So far, most of the capital has remained untouched, and tourists are still snapping pictures in riverside districts as always.
But little by little, the city is slowing down.
This week, floodwaters pushed into Don Muang airport, used mostly for domestic flights, shutting it down. And on Friday, the State Railway of Thailand said all train services from Bangkok to southern Thailand were suspended after the tracks in Bangkok’s suburbs were submerged by floodwaters.
Thais and expatriates alike continued to leave Bangkok as foreign governments urged their citizens to avoid the threatened city, citing transportation difficulties and shortages of certain food items.
Seven of Bangkok’s 50 districts all in the northern outskirts are heavily flooded, and residents have fled aboard bamboo rafts and army trucks and by wading through waist-deep water. Eight other districts have seen less serious flooding.
New flooding was reported Friday in the city’s southeast when a canal overflowed in a neighborhood on the outer parts of Sukhumvit Road. And high tides briefly touched riverside areas closer to the city’s central business districts of Silom and Sathorn.
But the day passed without major incident.
“It is clear that although the high tides haven’t reached 2.5 meters (8.2 feet), it was high enough to prolong the suffering of those living outside of the flood walls and to threaten those living behind deteriorating walls,” Bangkok Gov. Sukhumbhand Paribatra said.
The flood walls protecting much of the inner city are 8.2 feet high, and Saturday’s high tide is expected to reach 8.5 feet (2.6 meters).
International charity Save the Children said it was concerned that crocodiles and snakes were lurking in stagnant floodwaters it said are growing filthier by the day.
“Every day we see children playing in the water, bathing or wading through it trying to make their way to dry ground,” said Annie Bodmer-Roy, the group’s spokeswoman in Thailand.
The aid group said many families have been left without access to running water or clean toilets.
“There is a very real risk of waterborne or communicable diseases such as diarrhoea and skin infections taking hold if families can’t maintain basic standards of hygiene,” Bodmer-Roy said. “It is essential that the risks facing children in this crisis are understood and steps taken to keep them safe.”
