Dust Problems Surge In North

[kenai]

From what I understand - cloud seeding is being attempted in both the north and north-east. There needs to be a fairly high level of humidity and other atmospheric conditions to get rain though. I would think its going to take mother nature to knock down this stuff.

Driving from lampang yesterday numerous fires along the road. And conditions are worse there - due to the coal plant I imagine.

[chiangmaibruce]

OK folks, here's the latest from the village CNN:

Was sitting at the local roadside cafe and the guy delivering newspapers was talking to the owner. he had just delivered papers to the local bee-keepers place. the bee-keeper was apparently very busy cleaning up his hives because all his bees had died, supposedly because of the dust/smoke.

[jubby]

The Planes are nothing but a Joke. Lets not kid ourselves that any action will be taken now or in the near future.

A lot of the smoke is due to man made fires. I see them start the fires up every evening . It takes a Thai to tell a Thai to stop burning or else. and its just not going to happen. I'm going south for a couple of weeks, hopefully we'll get some rain early April.

[el jefe]

The Planes are nothing but a Joke. Lets not kid ourselves that any action will be taken now or in the near future.

A lot of the smoke is due to man made fires. I see them start the fires up every evening . It takes a Thai to tell a Thai to stop burning or else. and its just not going to happen. I'm going south for a couple of weeks, hopefully we'll get some rain early April.

Agreed.

Mapguy keeps saying call the govt hotline. That's a waste of time. I was in Samoeng today and some of the roads north of there. The entire Samoeng Valley was on fire today. There were hundreds of small fires. None that I saw were the burning of fields. All were the "controlled burns" on the side of the road, the hillsides, and the undergrowth in the forest. Yeah, there were also lots of garbage fires. Who is doing this burning? If it's the roadside, it's govt sponsored and supported.

The way understand it from friends is that the govt has requested that no one start fires in January and February but they're turning their back to fires in March. They'd rather have all the pollution in a 6 week period, than spread out throughout the winter.

If the govt wanted to stop the burning it seems pretty easy. If I could spot hundreds of fires and an equal amount that were still smoldering from yesterday and the day before, the govt could just as easily spot those fires. Fine the owners of any property with a fire-blackened area. That would stop the burning immediately. Why that's not happening I don't know, but they obviously won't do that.

In that case, what's the point in our complaining?

[scotbeve]

el jefe,

Calling may help if not for anything but a statistic. Read in the paper that the govt is going to hire 2000 firefighters (they'll need some sort of training first...)

I agree, try to do controlled burnings through out the whole year. I've got about 45 ry of teak plantations and we do controlled burnings twice a year as well as cutting a 10 m firestop.