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They are getting washed away in Bangkok. The rains have not abated, and the flood waters grow higher and more dangerous every day.
“Residents of Bangkok are escaping the flooded Thai capital in their tens of thousands due to worsening weather forecasts and the government’s evacuation orders.
Flood waters were already seeping into central parts of Bangkok on Thursday morning, with waters entering the Grand Palace, near the swollen Chao Phraya river, the AFP news agency reported.
Al Jazeera’s Wayne Hay, reporting from Bangkok, said the number of districts that have been ordered to evacuate is increasing by the hour.
“The water level is only expected to rise when the floodwaters combine with high tides that are on the way,” he said.
Sukhumbhand Paribatra, the Bangkok governor, said on Thursday that he expected to soon announce an evacuation warning for Sai Mai district, located on the city’s northern outskirts, where waist-high water has turned roads into virtual rivers and swamped petrol stations and homes.
A day earlier, Sukhumbhand said residents of two of the city’s 50 districts – Don Muang and Bang Phlat, both already partially submerged – should leave for shelters.”
I mention Bangkok here because my best friend called me last night from Suvarnabhumi airport. He said everything was in very short supply. Water, food, petrol were all extremely hard to come buy. Transportation is sketchy at best. He ended up taking a tuk-tuk to the airport in a harrowing 6 hour journey. He assured me that he was getting the heck out of Dodge as fast as a plane darn near anywhere would take him. 
Mass disruption
In the district of Sai Mai, on Bangkok’s northern outskirts, hundreds of residents clambered aboard packed military vehicles with their belongings, desperate to leave.
Yingluck said this week that central Bangkok could be swamped by up to 1.5 metres of water in some places if barriers broke and told residents to get their belongings up to high ground.
“After assessing the situation, we expect floodwater to remain in Bangkok for around two weeks to one month before going into the sea,” she said on Wednesday.
Authorities would guard important places such as the royal palace and power stations, she said.
The floods in the north, northeast and centre of Thailand have disrupted the lives of nearly 2.5 million, with more than 113,000 in shelters and 720,000 people seeking medical attention.
Flooding has already forced the closure of seven industrial estates, causing billions of dollars of damage, disrupting international supply chains for industry and putting about 650,000 people temporarily out of work.
The crisis in Pakistan is getting worse according to the CBC as new flood waters are displacing even more people.
“New flooding in Pakistan sent 150,000 people to higher ground Saturday as aid agencies struggled to help the millions of people already affected by the disaster. The evacuation of homes was carried out in southern Sindh province as the latest surge approached. Already, 600,000 people are in relief camps set up in Sindh province because of flooding over the past month.”
The unspoken question is why is the relief effort have such a low international profile? Admittedly, this state is starting to change, but if we look at the Haiti Earthquake and the magnitude and intensity of the aid response what is different? Conditions in Pakistan are certainly as dire or even more so considering the larger scale of the devastation.
“Howard Arfin, spokesman for the Canadian Red Cross, is in one of the worst affected areas.
“We’re seeing first-hand the massive destruction from a river that is five times its normal size. Homes are washed out all around us. We’re still seeing people up to their chests in water,” he told CBC News. […]
According to Arfin, six million people are already homeless, and there are upwards of 20 million people whose lives have been impacted.”
Six million homeless? That like 1/5 of the population of Canada. The scale of destruction is really hard to imagine.
“About one-fifth of the country — a chunk of land about the size of Italy — has been affected. The floodwaters now covering roughly 6.8 million hectares are blamed for killing about 1,600 people.”
There is some good news though:
“On Friday, the United Nations said it has raised about 70 per cent of the $460 million US it called for in its emergency appeal.”
So, the aid money is slowly being gathered, at least that is something. Distance is a part of the equation of why there has been a lethargic response to the floods in Pakistan the other variables are still clouded. Some of the more pessimistic ideas could be the negative associations Pakistan has with the Taliban and the War on Terror, I would like to think though that we could separate the need for aid out from our misguided imperial policies and prejudices.
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