Thailand - Extent of Thailand's flood damage revealed

As thousands of Thais continue to pick up the pieces in provinces north of Bangkok following the country's devastating floods, the true extent of the damage is slowly emerging.

While the latest assessment by the government, as revealed by Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra yesterday, estimates flood damage at 1.3 trillion baht (US$42 billion), the recollections of those returning to schools, homes and offices show how the scale of the rising waters was grossly underestimated.

The scene at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), a half-hour ride north of Bangkok in Rangsit, is a case in point.

Picking through the fetid piles of debris and prodding gingerly at loose floorboards, swollen wooden doors and walls covered in mould, an employee recalled how students, faculty and staff had battled for two weeks in October to keep the premises dry.

Eventually, on the afternoon of Oct 21, they gave up. They were told by army personnel helping them that they still had 24 hours to evacuate, but AIT president Said Irandoust decided to evacuate immediately.

It proved the right decision: By 9pm, the campus was under 1m of water, and Prof Said, the last man to leave, had to be taken out in a boat.

The waters eventually rose to above head level, and could be pumped out only five weeks later, when the surrounding areas dried up.

The AIT's human resource department, which did not move its records to the second floor, lost almost everything.

"Nobody could imagine a flood to the depth of 2m to 3m, which would stay for five weeks," said the AIT Extension director, Dr Jonathan Shaw. "It was simply beyond imagination."

It was a similar story further north at the ancient capital of Ayutthaya, a World Heritage site.

On Oct 3, archaeologist Chaiyanand Busayarat, the director of the Historical Park, was assigned to work there. No one expected more than the usual annual flood.

Yet, four days later, a deluge of water swamped the sprawling temple site up to 2.5m high, and remained for four weeks.

The waters defaced 200-year-old wall paintings in one of the temples, Wat Choeng Tha, even though the temple was raised. And even above the water mark, creeping damp caused the plaster to bubble and peel.

Large cracks appeared in the brickwork of the foundations of some stupas in Wat Phra Ram, one of the bigger attractions in the park - likely a result of erosion by waves raised by rescue and supply boats as they crisscrossed the inundated site.

Experts from several countries have since visited the historical site to assess the damage, and restoration work is planned. Fortunately, the main structures appear to have escaped the worst damage.

Mr Chaiyanand said the historical site, located on an island framed by three rivers, had always been flood-prone. But this was the biggest flood in the history books, he noted. "We just didn't expect this," he said.

Indeed, many in Thailand were not prepared for the scale of the flooding, the country's worst in 50 years. In many provinces as well as in Bangkok, flood defences proved inadequate, while the government was repeatedly criticised for underplaying the scale of the disaster and not giving enough warnings.

At the AIT, folders from the human resource department which had survived were spread out this week in the sun to dry, while an army of students, staff and workers from the campus' management contractor piled debris into waste bags and scrubbed walls and windows.

The buildings, including the residential quarters for staff, faculty and students, had clearly sustained serious damage; some partition walls and doors had been reduced to little more than pulp.

Those living in ground-floor quarters who had not moved their possessions lost everything, from refrigerators and washing machines to personal mementos and documents.

Outside, bicycles remained parked in rusted rows and tangled heaps. The AIT's popular nine-hole golf course had been reduced to a lake: pools of dark water remained, while the dry areas were mostly brown with dead grass. Across the once pleasantly wooded campus, which once prided itself as environmentally friendly, almost all the ground vegetation was dead.

The floods came as a major blow to the AIT, which opened its doors on the site in the 1970s. The institution had already been suffering financially, despite the support of governments represented on it and funding from fees from its 2,000 or so students.

Describing the financial blow to AIT from the floods as "massive", Dr Shaw said: "But we still don't know how much. Assessors have only just started work."

He added that the AIT hoped to recover some money from insurance. But a source close to the institute's board said there are fears the AIT may be able to recover only about 10 million baht - nowhere near the preliminary damage estimate of 1 billion baht - because the buildings were old.

Dr Shaw said there could be a major overhaul of the campus, such as abandoning its low-rise buildings and building a modern high-rise. "We have a tremendous opportunity now to rebuild and re-establish more modern offices," he said.

Throughout the crisis, he added, "students never missed a class" as classes were moved to Bangkok, Hua Hin and Chiang Mai. But, he said, "it is still impossible to say when the AIT campus will be ready to be occupied again".

Nirmal Ghosh

The Straits Times

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