Samut Prakan Ready To Take Bangkok Overflow: Experts

[jackdawson]

Thank you Samut Prakan.

[philw]

IT sounds like BKK has been acting like a great dam holding all the water north by keeping gates closed until very recently leaving little to nothing flowing into the Samut Prakhan outlet to the sea.

Apart from the huge river that goes through the capital?

There's always one...

When we read the news, it has all been about holding back water, not about finding ways to get it through (apart from the business about using boats to aid the flow of rivers...

SC

Don't worry SC, they can't help it.

It probably gives power to little willies if they denigrate all the time.........

[MaxLee]

I live in Srinakarin Paknam. Does anybody know that area? I accommodated my uncle and aunt from Bang Bua Thong Nontaburi at my parent's house. Does anybody know Mantana Village?

[animatic]

IT sounds like BKK has been acting like a great dam holding all the water north by keeping gates closed until very recently leaving little to nothing flowing into the Samut Prakhan outlet to the sea.

No, it has sounded like Bangkok has been trying to channel the water thru the normal channels of egress for this season, but not being told for far too long how much more than normal was coming.

Someone was clearly not looking, or ignoring the reports coming from 'little people' commonly known as scientists and technicians, who's jobs are to monitor colate and quantify this data, for those with the authority to make big decisions affecting 10s of millions of human lives.

[philw]

Meanwhile a third of the country is in tatters, several million people seriously hurt and massive reconstruction will be required.

How about putting our collective farang energy into something constructive, like helping ???

Moderators, please open a ThaiVisa relief fund.

My opening donation is $100 from paypal.

Please open the fund.

Lets change the tone of this increasingly negative forum.

[tlansford]

If you haven't seen them yet, here are some pics from Nonthaburi and Pathum Thani

[frodo]

I live in Srinakarin Paknam. Does anybody know that area? I accommodated my uncle and aunt from Bang Bua Thong Nontaburi at my parent's house. Does anybody know Mantana Village?

Mantana Village on Nakhon Nayok? I know 3 families there and they evacuated. I cannot tell you if the entire village evacuated or what the situation was that they decided to leave.

[MaxLee]

I live in Srinakarin Paknam. Does anybody know that area? I accommodated my uncle and aunt from Bang Bua Thong Nontaburi at my parent's house. Does anybody know Mantana Village?

Mantana Village on Nakhon Nayok? I know 3 families there and they evacuated. I cannot tell you if the entire village evacuated or what the situation was that they decided to leave.

Well near a Honda Car house. Is anybody familiar with that? Srinakarin Road, the same road as Foodland, but still going over the bridge till the Honda car house.

[hammered]

Sukhumband plays Kanute is what has been happening and now he hopes others will take the blame for his idiocy. Even wihtin the dem party this arrogant fool is hated

[whybother]

Sukhumband plays Kanute is what has been happening and now he hopes others will take the blame for his idiocy. Even wihtin the dem party this arrogant fool is hated

Yingluck has been saying for a couple of days now that she would open the gates. She enabled the Disaster Act to do it. Still nothing. Why not?

[hammered]

Sukhumband plays Kanute is what has been happening and now he hopes others will take the blame for his idiocy. Even wihtin the dem party this arrogant fool is hated

Yingluck has been saying for a couple of days now that she would open the gates. She enabled the Disaster Act to do it. Still nothing. Why not?

Today she has had to order armed police to force the opening of gates in Pathum Thani and resist local officials. Not exactly reported well in English language media but the Thai people have been demanding she overide BKK

[whybother]

Sukhumband plays Kanute is what has been happening and now he hopes others will take the blame for his idiocy. Even wihtin the dem party this arrogant fool is hated

Yingluck has been saying for a couple of days now that she would open the gates. She enabled the Disaster Act to do it. Still nothing. Why not?

Today she has had to order armed police to force the opening of gates in Pathum Thani and resist local officials. Not exactly reported well in English language media but the Thai people have been demanding she overide BKK

Last I checked, Pathum Thani is outside Sukhumband's jurisdiction.

[thaicbr]

Sukhumband plays Kanute is what has been happening and now he hopes others will take the blame for his idiocy. Even wihtin the dem party this arrogant fool is hated

He did his job. To try and ensure that BKK does not get flooded based on information from FROC and the government.

Remember it was only 5-6 days ago that the Agriculture minister said the worst was over for Bangkok.

And then 3 days ago Yingluck ask's for the gates to be opened.

They are now open and have been were possible for 2 days.

Don't forget the Governors job is still to protect as much of BKK as he can. So he has to ensure that flood walls are holding etc.

[whybother]

He did his job. To try and ensure that BKK does not get flooded based on information from FROC and the government.

Remember it was only 5-6 days ago that the Agriculture minister said the worst was over for Bangkok.

And then 3 days ago Yingluck ask's for the gates to be opened.

They are now open and have been were possible for 2 days.

Don't forget the Governors job is still to protect as much of BKK as he can. So he has to ensure that flood walls are holding etc.

Are they open yet?

[hammered]

Sukhumband plays Kanute is what has been happening and now he hopes others will take the blame for his idiocy. Even wihtin the dem party this arrogant fool is hated

Yingluck has been saying for a couple of days now that she would open the gates. She enabled the Disaster Act to do it. Still nothing. Why not?

Today she has had to order armed police to force the opening of gates in Pathum Thani and resist local officials. Not exactly reported well in English language media but the Thai people have been demanding she overide BKK

Last I checked, Pathum Thani is outside Sukhumband's jurisdiction.

Its all close. It doesnt matter but Sukhumband needs to be removed from the equation. He is playing bad games

edited to add: not allowing water to flow through BKK for weeks shows little respect to those suffering

Edited October 23, 2011 by hammered

[whybother]

Its all close. It doesnt matter but Sukhumband needs to be removed from the equation. He is playing bad games

It's close ... but it's not Sukhumband. Who's playing the games?

[TAWP]

edited to add: not allowing water to flow through BKK for weeks shows little respect to those suffering

What do you hope to gain by posting such misrepresentations?

It's like seeing history-revisionists hard at work when history is still happening. Sad.

And also: If you think doubling the amount of suffering will help anyone, then you are deluded. Going from 8 million [to some degree] affected and add up to 12 million top that number isn't 'small potato'.

And to both lose the factory estates and the Company HQ and parliament estate will further erode any investor trust in the nation.

Are you hoping for a complete meltdown of the nation? Does that make it easier for Thaksin to come back and take over during early called elections in a couple of months? Is that it?

[whybother]

Sukhumband plays Kanute is what has been happening and now he hopes others will take the blame for his idiocy. Even wihtin the dem party this arrogant fool is hated

PM orders Irrigation Department to slow down release of water into capital, urges public, private sectors to allow employees days off /MCOT

Sukhumband is at it again ... oh, no ... it's the PM. Doesn't matter. Let's blame Sukhumband and the Democrats anyway.

[Gary A]

Like it or not, Bangkok is at the bottom of the hill. Surely it is a simple fact that water flows downhill. For many years they have held back flood waters causing areas outside Bangkok to flood. Greedy developers along with their pet politicians have filled in many drainage canals in order to expand the already huge concrete jungle. Even the remaining canals are flow restricted with trash, collapses and weeds. Pumps have been allowed to rust away because of no maintenance.

So, Bangkok has created an even larger problem than that which has existed for many years. Who can blame people living in flooded ares outside the city for being angry.

Bangkok is the center of finance and commerce but they also have a responsibility to protect property outside of the city. Closing the flood gates is not the way to protect Bangkok.

Picture a wealthy property owner who has low land along a waterway. His property floods every year so he builds a dam to keep his property from flooding which causes higher land upstream to flood. This is exactly what Bangkok has done.

[hammered]

Like it or not, Bangkok is at the bottom of the hill. Surely it is a simple fact that water flows downhill. For many years they have held back flood waters causing areas outside Bangkok to flood. Greedy developers along with their pet politicians have filled in many drainage canals in order to expand the already huge concrete jungle. Even the remaining canals are flow restricted with trash, collapses and weeds. Pumps have been allowed to rust away because of no maintenance.

So, Bangkok has created an even larger problem than that which has existed for many years. Who can blame people living in flooded ares outside the city for being angry.

Bangkok is the center of finance and commerce but they also have a responsibility to protect property outside of the city. Closing the flood gates is not the way to protect Bangkok.

Picture a wealthy property owner who has low land along a waterway. His property floods every year so he builds a dam to keep his property from flooding which causes higher land upstream to flood. This is exactly what Bangkok has done.

This also exactly what people outside of Bangkok talk about. It isnt that they want Bangkokians to suffer or even dislike the people. It is about the idea of Bangkok and "others" always being placed second and the unfairness of it all. Try finding anyone in a flooded area just north of Bangkok who doesnt think that not opening the floodgates was a bad thing. What was the policy? To stop the water and hope it went away? People even of limited education understand that water needs top flow to the sea and stopping it is not the answer. It may have temporarily averted something in Bangkok but now even Dr. Seri has said that inner Bangkok will flood because the floodgates were not opened soon enough.

It really is beyond even playing blame games now as the sheer tragedy of people making decisions that have actually guaranteed the last thing they wanted while creating bigger regional divisions is like something out of Shakespeare, and nobody comes out of this well, but maybe the biggest unnoticed disaster is that there wasnt a national body to deal with such things but just layers of different bureaucratic officials in different bureaucratic bodies who only answered to local politicians and only considered local needs while national government lacked the power to really do anything without declaring draconian laws into effect. It really needs a national standing body under a specified minister with power over the whole country's water management who can make decisions and get on with regardless of who is in power and regardless of whether there is an election and change of government taking place, and we all know the problems of getting any decision made when an election is coming up and then a new government is being formed and no doubt that also contributed to no action on releasing water from dams etc