Bangkok is used to absorbing the sudden afternoon downpours that inundate the city during the rainy season. Even streets in many central high-rise districts can briefly turn into rivers, with rats and cockroaches racing out of sewers and taking temporary refuge on trees and buildings as the subterranean world is flushed out. But every city has a breaking point, and this year rain fell so fast and so hard that whole neighbourhoods of the Thai capital have been transformed, not into rivers, but stagnant lakes.
In parts of the city, roughly 300mm of rain – the equivalent of half a year of average rainfall in London – fell in about two days. About 40 people died in flood-related incidents, according to the government. A number of the deaths were from drowning and several from accidental electrocution.
Thousands of people stayed in more than 230 shelters across the city, authorities said. Suleemas Kurangkul, a 73-year-old resident of a block of flats whose ground floor stairs are still under water, said last weekend’s rain was not the usual evening storm but was constant, “like all day, all night”. By the time she and her neighbours received a mobile phone warning, it was too late, and the street-level water was waist-high.
The 1970s Khlong Chan flat compound in north-east Bangkok where Suleemas lives has become a symbol of the disaster. Photos have been shared across Thailand of the flats rising out of the brownish water, with the rooftops of parked cars barely peeking above the surface, although the authorities had managed to drain away the worst of it by Thursday. Later in the week, during a brief respite in the rain, Suleemas said the water had receded somewhat.
So much debris and rubbish floating all over the place.” Built on a vast floodplain of the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok, a megacity of millions, relies on a network of muddy canals to drain water, as well as pumps and dikes. But concrete construction has destroyed much of the canal network, and the city is unable to cope. The government has declared a flood disaster across all 50 of the city’s districts.
Some neighbourhoods have turned into dystopian scenes, with people using blow-up paddling pools or, in one case, a floating fridge, as boats to reach their homes. One man was arrested for riding a jetski along a main road. Many schools have closed, and with much of the capital in gridlock even people in less affected areas have been stuck at home.
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