Bangkok: Receding floodwaters north of Bangkok have reduced the threat to the Thai capital, the prime minister said yesterday, but a rise in coastal high tides in the Gulf of Thailand will still test the city's flood defences.
"If things go on like this, we expect floodwater in Bangkok to recede within the first week of November," Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said on national television.
Bangkok's main waterway, the Chao Phraya River, overflowed its banks yesterday in some areas during unusually high tides, flooding normally bustling Chinatown and streets around Bangkok's glittering Grand Palace and Temple of the Reclining Buddha, areas usually thronged with tourists.
Buildings across Bangkok have been sand-bagged for protection. Many residents have fled the city or stocked up on water, food, boots, life jackets and even boats.
Stockpile of staples
Thailand's worst floods in half a century have killed 381 people since July, wiped out a quarter of the main rice crop in the world's biggest exporter, forced up global prices of computer hard drives and caused delays in global auto production after destroying industrial estates.
The death toll rose overnight when a boat carrying a family of four capsized in strong winds, drowning the father, mother and eldest son in three-metre-deep floodwater. Their six-year-old daughter, the only one wearing a life vest, survived.
They had been ferrying their son from work in Ayutthaya, a flood-ravaged province west of Bangkok where every district has been inundated for nearly two months.
In Bangkok, prices of eggs have quadrupled as jittery residents stockpile staples, but the government said flood victims would have enough bottled drinking water, dairy products, pork and chicken.
Cash was also in heavy demand. The Bank of Thailand has repeated that there is enough money circulating to meet demand for three months following a crush of withdrawals. Nearly 400 bank branches have closed across the country due to the floods.
The floods have submerged 1.6 million hectares of land, an area roughly the size of Kuwait, turning entire cities into urban reservoirs.
Critical situation
Yingluck said the ebbing of floodwaters in northern provinces, thanks to the draining of water into the Gulf of Thailand through canals and pumps, had reduced the risk of large volumes of run-off water bearing down on Bangkok. The city sits only 2 metres above sea level.
"In this critical situation, there is some good news for us. Our water-management plan went smoothly during previous days," Yingluck said.
