1 Million People Stranded As Floods Rage Through Thai South

[Randee]

Have you seen the cabling on the street poles in Pattaya? An absolute joke. I saw exposed live terminals on a construction site there within arms reach!

yes. in patong phuket it is the same. none of the pigeons have feet, only stumps, from landing on the wires and being electrocuted and their feet blown off - really.

That's nothing. On numerous pedestrian crossovers in Bangkok there are exposed, live wires within arms reach. Children may have to stretch a bit, though.

yes agreed.

i'm wondering why there aren't daily reports of people being electrocuted around thailand though? i guess it's like fire, you get taught that it burns before you put your hand in it??

[smedly]

seen a weather forcast that looked like the storm was heading NE, that would put pattaya and BK in it's path

[Randee]

seen a weather forcast that looked like the storm was heading NE, that would put pattaya and BK in it's path

i hope so! i love it when it storms up here. love sitting at an outdoor bar watching the streets fill up, thunder and lightning crrrrack booming. ... but the good thing up here is it soon disappears. doesn't cause the same problems as it does down south .... i'm sure somebody will correct me on this if i'm wrong....

[jackr]

yes. in patong phuket it is the same. none of the pigeons have feet, only stumps, from landing on the wires and being electrocuted and their feet blown off - really.

Only way a bird will get electrocuted is if it lands on unsheathed flex (ie, live/neutral, live/earth together) which would be highly unlikely and would kill it dead as opposed to blowing its feet off. Birds just don't get electrocuted from landing on live wires. They'll sit quite happily on 432KV HTs (which are unsheathed) all the time; in fact, you could too and wouldn't feel a trickle. Reason being is there's no circuit being made. Pigeons lose toes easily, mainly through getting tangled up in our garbage/string, which ends up cutting off circulation and dropping off.

Anyway, sorry to hijack. Is there any more news on Krabi, specifically the town and beaches?

[mallyrd]

a safe grounding to earth, even in new building or home, it does not excist in THAILAND, land of smiles and hubs and crackdowns and other stuff

You have no idea what you are talking about. There are plenty of properly constructed buildings in Thailand, my house for one where every socket is three pinned, I have two separate circuit boards each with its own ELCB etc. et al.

[meelousee]

Ah La Nina arrives, and who would be forewarned?

No not Thailand, remember Australia?

As the floods move norhward will we have another 1983? You may not have been here but to see a taxi floating down Sukhumvit is a sight not to forget. The only transport to Don Muang was by boat Soi 11 was chest high.

Then did anyone predict cold weather 2 weeks before Sonkran? In 1999 it was 85f/29c degrees at midnight!

Last night it was 60f/15c

Global warming does not mean hot all around it means extreme climate change. Hot or cold all on the wrong days and flood, drought.

Oh well I will go back to my coal fired Styrofoam factory and wait for the next cold beer :jap:

Edited March 30, 2011 by meelousee

[fxe1200]

so the trains to the south are cancelled yes? i need to go to hat yai, i guess the train is not an option? hat yai isn't mentioned so it must be ok? a flight it will have to be.

oh and my thoughts on this matter - i'm sure that the people of the south are strong enough and conditioned enough to ride this severe misfortune - but fear that lessons from mistakes will not be learned. as usual. my sympathies to those who are suffering

Hat Yai is doing ok, as long the authorities do not open the floodgates of the water reservoirs in the surrounding like on November 2 last year.

Edited March 30, 2011 by fxe1200

[Pi Sek]

I think that this thread would do well not to degenerate into a thread highlighting the deficiences of Thai building standards, electrical technical knowledge and whathaveyous. We all know that standards here are negotiable, but this thread should stay really as a source of information for those that need to know where and when disasters occur, what accessibility is like and so on and so forth.

Having said that...

a safe grounding to earth, even in new building or home, it does not excist in THAILAND, land of smiles and hubs and crackdowns and other stuff

You have no idea what you are talking about. There are plenty of properly constructed buildings in Thailand, my house for one where every socket is three pinned, I have two separate circuit boards each with its own ELCB etc. et al.

You beat me to it!

The quality of building here just depends on how closely the workers are managed.

Ah La Nina arrives, and who would be forewarned?

No not Thailand, remember Australia?

As the floods move norhward will we have another 1983? You may not have been here but to see a taxi floating down Sukhumvit is a sight not to forget. The only transport to Don Muang was by boat Soi 11 was chest high.

Then did anyone predict cold weather 2 weeks before Sonkran? In 1999 it was 85f/29c degrees at midnight!

Last night it was 60f/15c

Global warming does not mean hot all around it means extreme climate change. Hot or cold all on the wrong days and flood, drought.

Oh well I will go back to my coal fired Styrofoam factory and wait for the next cold beer :jap:

Did you know that a lot of people around the world, not least of all the USA, do not actually believe in global warming?

I do, but there's not really anything we can do about it, especially when, not even do they not support measures to prevent it, they actually do not believe there is such a thing as global warming...

Frankly unbelievable.

Maybe England turns all sunny, which makes the girls prettier & more condusive and people smile & talk to each other randomly on the street; and the good weather means everyone save on central heating as well as petrol (because they've bought Honda Waves to ride in the nice weather). I might consider going back then.

[animatic]

"I've heard that someone was electrocuted. So, power has been turned off," Ekkarat said

As sad as the flooding is, does the above sentence sound as stupid to others as it does to me? Could some actual research be done before making knee jerk reactions? Hopefully this was a misquote.

Ok, I was there, and I agree with the decision to cut off the power.

There would likely have been dozens electrocuted otherwise.

Edited March 30, 2011 by animatic

[animatic]

a safe grounding to earth, even in new building or home, it does not excist in THAILAND, land of smiles and hubs and crackdowns and other stuff

You have no idea what you are talking about. There are plenty of properly constructed buildings in Thailand, my house for one where every socket is three pinned, I have two separate circuit boards each with its own ELCB etc. et al.

Grounded buildings are still a minority in Thailand.

It took my 4 electricians before one happily agreed to put in ground through out.

2 tried to talk me lout of it as unsafe for people in bare feet, till I walked away from them shaking my head in disgust.

Edited March 30, 2011 by animatic

[george]

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BREAKING NEWS:

At least 4 dead, 100 missing in Krabi mudslide; Floods across Thailand kill at least 15

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