Thailand on its knees due to floods: 8 dead and almost 5 thousand evacuated, a state of disaster declared after over 330 mm of rain

An unstoppable fury of water has transformed the streets of Bangkok into navigable canals, forcing residents to move around in canoes and small makeshift boats to reach shops or save themselves to reach supermarkets and less flooded areas. The monsoon rainfall, which intensified drastically since Thursday, has dumped over 330 millimeters of rain on the Thai capital, completely hacking urban drainage systems and submerging entire residential areas.

Faced with this apocalyptic scenario, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration and governor Chadchart Sittipunt have declared a state of natural disaster in all 50 districts of the city. The toll of the emergency in the metropolitan area alone records almost 4,900 people evacuated and hosted in around 200 temporary reception centres, while around 52,000 families directly suffer the hardships of houses invaded by mud and debris, with overflowing drains that struggle to dispose of the enormous masses of water arriving from the peripheral areas.

The dramatic toll at a national level: 8 deaths

The climate crisis does not spare the rest of the country, where the situation takes on even more serious consequences under the pressure of the south-west monsoon and a low pressure system. Data released by the Department for Disaster Prevention and Mitigation confirmed that the rainfall affected over 545,000 people distributed across 25 different provinces, hitting the central and eastern regions hard.

The overall death toll at the national level rises to 8 deaths recorded in the last ten days, prompting Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul to order extraordinary and immediate interventions to accelerate the flow of water in urban centers and isolated rural areas. Although the showers in Bangkok have eased in the last few hours, granting a respite to rescuers, tension remains at the highest levels due to the fear of new accumulations of water, abruptly reawakening in the population’s memory the terrible nightmare of the historic floods of 2011, when the entire country was brought to its knees by catastrophic floods that caused hundreds of victims and inestimable damage.