Thailand Flooding Disaster · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

The death toll in Thailand’s worst flooding disaster in 50 years has reached more than 500. Government authorities said 25 provinces are still suffering from the flooding. More than one million families have been affected and the flooding has damaged 4.4 million acres of agricultural land in the country.
The Bangkok governor revealed that 470 areas in the city are affected by the rising floodwaters and evacuation has been ordered in many districts. Below is a map of the flooded parts of Bangkok:
Suthichai Yoon writes about the impact of the floods on Buddhist temples and monks:
Buddhist monks are out in full force these days to help fight the rising floods. A few thousand temples have been submerged and monks in remote areas have suffered from the lack of daily food because local residents haven't been able to do their daily rounds o alms-giving to monks after floods have hit many provinces.
The Thailand Life posted some flooding photos:
I decided to take my camera down there this afternoon and see exactly how much we Sutthisan residents should be concerned. The water seems well contained on the main road, and it doesn’t look strong enough at the moment to make it much further into town, but that said, some of the small side roads have been completely submerged, as you can see.
From the blog of The Thailand Life
Ladprao 64 reports that nothing much has changed in the flooded areas:
From our point of view, there has not been much change again today. Those areas affected are still affected, although the area has widened slightly. There does not seem to have been any further movement of the water along Ladprao Road, although as I mentioned before it was claimed that the movement is now taking place underground.
Provinces a little further to the north, including Pathum Thani, are said to have slightly lower levels of flood water now and it is reported that life might return to normal there within ten days, although that sounds a bit like a guess. As ever, we shall see how it all turns out
Below is a video of motorcycles which are able to travel through the floods:
Twitter user @ThanongK criticizes government relief efforts:
@ThanongK: Only middle class people who have access to online get information on floods. Common people don't know what's going on.
@ThanongK: 6 Govt has no priorities over which areas to protect from floods. Govt focuses on helping industries instead of people.
@ThanongK: 7. Govt's sloppy relief operation is evident by its evacuation of people to areas where floods would eventually make their way to.
A Bruneian blogger created a video calling for more support for the flood victims. Below is a picture of ‘judnak’ bag (heavy task) which was invented to address the hygiene and sanitation problems in evacuation centers:
What’s a Judnak bag and what’s the role of Facebook in facilitating the production of this bag?
“Jud-Nak” bag was originated by a small group of strangers in Facebook since Monday 17 Oct 2011. By Tuesday, we found friend that own a factory with biodegradable materials who could manufacture the bags for us. By Thursday, we got Ploy and Ton from faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn university to design the usage graphics on the bag. Now on Friday, all the manufacturing of the first 20,000 pilot bags is completed. The whole process was conducted by people who barely know each other before, people who put in both money and labour we could find at the time. As the project could be beneficial to majority of people suffering from the biggest flood crisis in 50 years, we aspire to manufacture more of these bags and hopefully we can distribute them to those in need asap
The #thaiflood hashtag continues to be a realiable tool to monitor the flood situation:
@TAN_Network: Public Health warns against consuming ice during floods. All samples of ice and iced drinks tested were contaminated.
@MCOT_Eng: Half Bangkok's taxis ‘disappear’, only 60,000 of over 100,000 operate normally due to flood; many LPG, NGV gas stations closed