Residents sit on a boat as a man pulls it through a flooded street at Srimahaphot district in Prachin Buri province, east of Bangkok yesterday.
Agencies/Bangkok
Floods triggered by heavy rains claimed at least nine lives in Thailand this month and affected up to 1.5mn people, officials said yesterday.
Flooding was reported in 23 of the kingdom’s 77 provinces, the Disaster Prevention and Relief Department said.
Nine people have drowned over the past week in the north-eastern provinces of Surin and Sisakhet, it said.
The meteorological department has forecast heavy rains for the remainder of the month, especially in the northern provinces.
“The overall picture in the north-east has improved,” said Deputy Prime Minister Plodprasop Suraswadi, who is in charge of water management.
He warned people living on the banks of the Chao Phraya River to expect some flooding as authorities were pumping water into the main waterway to reduce flooding in the central plains.
Authorities said the country is not in danger of being inundated by another massive flood, similar to the 2011 disaster.
Much of the central plains and parts of Bangkok were flooded two years ago, forcing six large industrial estates and hundreds of factories to close for several months.
The 2011 floods left 813 dead and caused an estimated 1.4tn baht ($45.2bn) in damages, according to World Bank estimates.
Heavy monsoon rains exacerbated by Typhoon Usagi have pounded parts of Vietnam and Cambodia killing at least 36 people, authorities said yesterday, with many swept to their deaths in floods. Despite not being directly hit by Usagi—the world’s most powerful storm this year—parts of Southeast Asia have seen a worsening of their annual rainy season as the typhoon barrelled through the Philippines and China in recent days.
Central and southern Vietnam have been hit by bad weather since early last week, inundating fields and villages, with 24 dead and six missing, according to a 10-day update from the country’s flood and storm control department.
In Cambodia, officials said low pressure from the typhoon caused heavy rains, swelling the Mekong river with floods sweeping across several provinces.
At least 12 people, including six children under six years old, have died in the deluge, said Keo Vy of the National Disaster Management Committee.
Typhoon Usagi killed at least two people in the Philippines and some 25 people in southern China as it swept across the region over the weekend. Strong winds and torrential rain lashed the Chinese coast after making landfall in Guangdong province northeast of Hong Kong on Sunday evening. As the typhoon bore down on Hong Kong, operators shut down one of the world’s busiest sea ports and nearly 450 flights were either cancelled or delayed on Sunday.
At least 18 further deaths have been reported in the Philippines in monsoon rains worsened by the typhoon, which also unleashed landslides and power outages across southern Taiwan at the weekend as it ploughed through the Luzon Strait with ferocious winds and heavy downpours.
