Flooded Thai Updates

My friend Karridine sends this latest update:

The water from the country’s worst flooding in more than half a century is filling Bangkok’s Lahd Prao intersection, where three major roads meet. Office towers, condominiums and a popular shopping mall are in the area, where local observers say the water is 15 inches deep. The intersection is just down the street from the famed Chatuchak Weekend Market, a key tourist attraction. AP Newswire

My family and I live on Lahd Prao, just up the street from these pictures. I’ll get to the meat of this report in a moment, but first let me make a humanitarian appeal to help some of the folks stricken by these rising waters, share $20 – $50 for flood relief through non-government channels (read: effective, direct HELP) by sending a small donation to PayPal account BkkFloodHelp(at)Gmail-dot-com.

Now to today’s pictures… these are illustrative of how fragile our pitiful, human constructs are, on the one hand, and how resilient and resourceful we humans are, on the other. Yes, the water is NEARLY flooding the engines, but until it does, we’ll ease through (or plow through) the water between us and opportunity, come hell or… well, you get the picture.

The pumps I mentioned in an earlier dispatch (18-inch, diesel powered suckers) are placed around/across the city at strategic points, pumping 24/7 to keep SOME of the areas less-flooded than surrounding areas. If that sounds rather hazy or imprecise, it IS, and that’s part of what daily life is, here. Don’t know how much higher it’s getting, or how much longer its lasting, or when it’ll all drain away…

When the Christmas Tsunami hit southern Thailand late December, 2004, my wife’s uncle was reported missing, and I volunteered to help both the living and the dead there. Thailand was NOT PREPARED for that near-instantaneous event, or for dealing with the 8,200 dead and 8,400 injured in the few minutes of the actual tsunami surges.

Seven years later, and facing a slower-motion natural disaster of potentially greater magnitude, the Thais have learned several important lessons, and have been applying them to help themselves and their loved ones this time around. After weeks of flooding, the death-toll only this week passed 500, so that is an encouraging sign.

Yes, loss of property, crops, livestock and living quarters has been immense, into tens of billions of dollars’ worth, and it ain’t over yet, but the Thais learned some valuable lessons from the Tsunami, among them: 1) the government is slow, cumbersome and afraid to MOVE when it is at its best; and 2) the government is where all too much help STOPS at some official’s pocket, before reaching We, the People; and 3) that is why it is best to organize OURSELVES, at the local-neighborhood level, using online + cell + person-to-person networking.

Around 2009 I stopped tracking the $371 MILLION donated to Thai banks for the Tsunami relief, because it was STILL IN the banks, behind the lame excuse that ‘we have no protocol for releasing it…’ In perspective, much of this flows from the Buddhist belief that ‘it is better to do nothing, than to do SOMETHING wrong…’

So that’s why we set up the PayPal account in my friend’s name, and why we’re going out several times a week to distribute food and basic necessities where WE KNOW they are needed (next meeting Saturday, Nov 12). Every little bit helps, and we make sure it gets to needy. (PayPal account BkkFloodHelp(at)Gmail-dot-com)

We’re keeping a close watch on the incidence of conjunctivitis, dengue fever (hemorrhagic fever), dysentery and other water-borne diseases, but so far they’re not too serious. So write your questions here, and we’ll answer them AND send more pix as we can, from the slow-mo trainwreck that is inundating the jasmine-scented suburbs of Bangkok.