Bangkok's Traffic Body Snatchers

Bangkok's Body Snatchers - Por Tek Tung

BANGKOK: -- As he lingers over a Marlboro and a 1 a.m. cup of coffee outside his favorite Caltex station, Anand Supapdee ponders the future of his white pickup truck and concludes its days are numbered. "It's the ghosts," says 47-year-old Anand. "We have to change our cars every few years when they get haunted." Before he can explain, a static-coated voice issues from his handheld shortwave radio. Several kilometers away on a rain-slicked stretch of Bangkok's Boromratchanee Road, a black Toyota sedan has plowed into the back of a truck carrying sacks of cement. Anand, one of hundreds of Bangkok residents who voluntarily help mop up the city's nightly street carnage, jumps behind the wheel, while his 16-year-old co-worker Jitchana Srikachang climbs into the back. The pickup tears off toward the crash site.

Over the past four decades, Thailand has built the most extensive highway system in Southeast Asia. But the roads, crammed with 26 million registered vehicles, are anything but safe. With an average of 36 deaths a day, Thailand ranks sixth in the world in road fatalities. During Buddhist New Year celebrations last April, 654 people died in road accidents in a single week in the country and 36,642 people were injured. Yet Thailand has virtually no emergency-medical services or ambulance companies. Instead, the task of prying victims, alive and dead, out of the twisted metal and carting them off to hospitals and morgues falls to people like Anand, a member of Por Tek Tung, a charitable society operating out of a Chinese Buddhist temple in Bangkok. Founded more than a century ago by Chinese immigrants to provide funerals for the destitute, its staff and volunteers form a kind of ragtag Red Cross, rallying whenever tragedy strikes: when a building collapses, when a ferry sinks, and most often, when vehicles tangle on the roadways.

Waves of water from a recent rainstorm surge up around Anand's truck as he zips past other vehicles to get to the accident. It's his third of the night. The carnage peaks after 2 a.m., Anand says, when bars expel their patrons. The worst part of the job is collecting the remains of entire families killed in wrecks. Anand is a supervisor, which means he earns a $317 monthly salary and has received emergency-medical training from the government, which he then passes on to junior workers. Helpmate Jitchana volunteers for Por Tek Tung because he was in a motorcycle accident himself: he has a scar from it on his chin. "Someone helped me when I was hurt," he says, "so I'm helping others."

The two men say their work also helps them acquire Buddhist merit, improving their Karma. There's a worldly angle, too: their organization posts photographs of crash scenes outside its Bangkok headquarters to remind the public of its good work; the more photos, the greater the income from donations, it seems. Anand, a former deliveryman, says he's never had nightmares resulting from his work despite 19 years in the gruesome job.

By the time Anand reaches the accident, about 10 other Por Tek Tung vehicles and some 40 volunteers are milling about. There's no one to save. The victim, driving a black Toyota, had swung around a blind curve into the rear of a truck, which was carelessly parked for a quick tire check. He died in minutes from internal bleeding and a head wound. The 28-year-old trucker says, "I only stopped for about five minutes." He admits he never thought about driving the extra kilometer to a service station, whose white-and-blue fluorescent sign is clearly visible from the accident site. "I had my emergency lights on," the driver insists, but no emergency lights are blinking when the crumpled Toyota is pried from the truck's rear. A policeman says the trucker will "probably be arrested." But as Anand and Jitchana wander back to their pickup an hour-and-a-half later, he is neither cuffed nor in custody in the back of a police car. "That's for them to decide," shrugs Anand. He drives back to the Caltex station to wait for the next call, realizing his truck may now be haunted by a new ghost.

-- Time 2004-08-02