Storms wreak havoc in North - Udon and Mae Hong Sorn particularly affected

[rooster59]

Storms wreak havoc in North - Udon and Mae Hong Sorn particularly affected

Image: Daily News

UDON THANI:-- Severe summer storms continued to cause havoc across the north east and north of Thailand Friday.

Trees came down on cars, power cuts lasted for hours and advertising hoardings flapping in the high winds crashed to the ground crushing vehicles and damaging property, reports Daily News.

Much of the downtown area of Udon Thani was without power for many hours after dozens of power poles were flattened in the winds.

Houses were destroyed in Mae Hong Sorn and hill tribes in particular were warned due to their vulnerability.

The governor of Udon called on all relevant authorities to pull together to help the public affected by the severe weather.

Source: Daily News

-- 2016-05-07

[KhunBENQ]

About 100 km south of Udon we still got a good blow and heavy rainstorm, 2h power outage.

An FB video showing the terrible situation on the road, standstill, many fallen trees etc.:

https://www.facebook.com/chonticha.pinjai/videos/10205747941927002/

[Khun Paul]

he big question is why all these p;ower poles fall down and the advertising hoardings. trees you can understnd but anything put up by man should be able to stay up. But as with many things short-cuts, poor quality control and lack of maintenance is mainly to blame as is the habit of loading everything onto a power pole made for electricity cables, now holds a mutitude of everything else which weighs it down and makes it unstable.

[canopus1969]

Some parts of Udon still without electric

[sgtsabai]

Our power and phone service came back on just after sundown. I was downtown and luckily the wife and kids just made it back from the village. I made a run for it, but got hit by the storm a little over half way. Thais couldn't drive, either pulled over or worse slowed to a crawl. Where I grew up if one can't drive in a storm like this one doesn't ever go anywhere. Lots of hail but no apparent damage on the truck. A little wind blown water got in the house but no damage. Things could have been a lot worse had the storm sustained itself longer. My sympathy to all those experiencing damage.

[freedom4life]

interesting read/perspective:

http://henrymakow.com/thailands_bittersweet_democrac.html#sthash.OwEx48Kw.gbpl&st_refDomain=www.facebook.com&st_refQuery=

[SunsetT]

interesting read/perspective:

http://henrymakow.com/thailands_bittersweet_democrac.html#sthash.OwEx48Kw.gbpl&st_refDomain=www.facebook.com&st_refQuery=

Conspiracy theory ignoring the reality of Climate Change and the predicted possible/probable exacerbation of storms by the El Nino effect.

[KennyRasmussen]

Found this video / slide show from the storm in Udon Thani

[GOLDBUGGY]

About 100 km south of Udon we still got a good blow and heavy rainstorm, 2h power outage.

An FB video showing the terrible situation on the road, standstill, many fallen trees etc.:

https://www.facebook.com/chonticha.pinjai/videos/10205747941927002/

I am about 50 km south of Udon Thani. Some wind gusts but nothing too badly. No blown over trees here or anything near that. But a good rain, which we needed.

Yet the power was off here from 5 pm until 4 am. I have no idea why. Just another sleepless night.

[Gonsalviz]

he big question is why all these p;ower poles fall down and the advertising hoardings. trees you can understnd but anything put up by man should be able to stay up. But as with many things short-cuts, poor quality control and lack of maintenance is mainly to blame as is the habit of loading everything onto a power pole made for electricity cables, now holds a mutitude of everything else which weighs it down and makes it unstable.

Where do you live. The storms in Isan can be really wicked. 7 years here.

[revgreen]

Things got very nasty yesterday in Phetchabun. Lots of downed powerlines, trees, signs, etc. They're still working on restoring power to a lot of areas in town. Rained most of this evening as well but wasn't nearly as bad.

[CGW]

^^ In the "real" world infrastructure is designed to withstand whatever the natural world throws at it, buildings, ships etc are designed for worst case scenario, to perform within there design limitations, not fall down due to the fact they were under-engineered and have far more cables (weight!) hanging from them than was ever intended.

Nobody will be held responsible for these failures and certainly nobody will be accountable! - sad

[KhunBENQ]

^^ In the "real" world infrastructure is designed to withstand whatever the natural world throws at it,

Did you forget the emoticons? Irony, satire?

Ah I see!

USA and Australia are not part of the real word

[CGW]

^ Obviously you consider the infrastructure is adequate and well engineered for the conditions, just because other areas have problems where people will be held accountable is not IMO an excuse, luckily there were not more personal injuries.

[KhunBENQ]

Tornado like storms are tornado like storms!

I bet EVERY winter you will see such pictures from the US.

Are you willing to pay for an infrastructure "to withstand whatever the natural world throws at it,"?

Surely Thais are not (and the US also not).

[CGW]

Standards for building have improved in most areas of the world! Many moons ago! when I first started working ships, offshore structures were built to withstand 25 year storms, now the same structures are built to withstand 100 year storms, the majority of the infrastructure in Thailand is built based on lining whoever is handing out the contracts pocket. If you are an engineer you build to whatever "code" rules regulations require, if you under design and there is a failure you end up in court and most likely would never work again, so yes all projects in this day and age have to be able to "to withstand whatever the natural world throws at it,"?

How many of the high rise buildings in Thailand would fail if they were subject to there original design criteria!

The poles that fell down were under-designed for the amount of cables that were strung from them, a lot were doubtless old cables that had been left behind. Bangkok in recent years has made an effort to clean up the cables and have the junk removed, a lot of the cables should never have been there in the first place as the poles were only meant for power lines, but TIT no enforced regulations and poor design in the first place make them unfit for use IMO.

The PEA in Thailand makes huge profits, how much do they reinvest in up keep of their infrastructure? Not a lot I would wager...

Anyway, rant over - at least we have power again and there were no fatal injuries that we know off.