Bangkok on high alert as floodwaters threaten city

Saffron-robed monks and soldiers piled sandbags outside Bangkok’s most treasured temples and palaces yesterday as Thailand’s worst floods in decades sent ankle-high water rushing briefly into some of the capital’s main tourist districts.

High tides expected to peak today will be one of the biggest tests yet of Bangkok’s anti-flood defences. For days, the city’s Chao Phraya river has spilled its banks, forcing water into streets from Chinatown to the white-walled royal Grand Palace and the neighboring Temple of the Emerald Buddha.

Most of the water has receded at low tide. But some worried residents, fearing the worst is yet to come, are buying lifejackets and inflatable boats.

“You have to prepare,” said Fon Kanokporn, a banker who bought a rubber boat from a store that had several hanging from trees out front.

Employees at the shop said they had sold more than 3,000 boats in the last week. The brisk business is a measure of the fear gripping Bangkok and a reflection of the tragedy of neighboring provinces that have been submerged for weeks.

The flooding has triggered panic buying that has emptied Bangkok’s supermarkets of bottled water.

With some highways submerged and major production plants shut down, drinking water is fast becoming a precious commodity. Supermarkets in the capital are rationing instant noodles, rice and eggs.

Three months of relentless monsoon rains have caused the worst flooding in Thailand in nearly 60 years, triggering a national crisis that has overwhelmed the government of prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

The water has crept from the central plains south toward the Gulf of Thailand, engulfing a third of the country and killing nearly 400 people and displacing 110,000 more.

Now, Bangkok is in the way – with pools of water flowing around and through the city via a network of canals and rivers.

The government is worried major barriers and dikes could break since they were never designed to hold back so much water for so long. And this weekend, higher than normal tides are obstructing the critical flow of run-off from the north, fueling fears that parts of downtown could be swamped.

With floodwaters pushing the Chao Phraya to its limits, monks at the 200-year-old Temple of the Dawn were stacking lines of sandbags on a secondary barrier in case the river overflowed.

Army trucks dumped thousands more outside the Siriraj Hospital, where Thailand’s ailing and revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej has stayed since 2009.

So far, most of the city has remained untouched, and tourists are still snapping pictures in riverside districts as always.

But little by little, the city is slowing down.

This week, floodwaters pushed into Don Muang airport, used mostly for domestic flights, shutting it down.

Yesterday, the State Railway of Thailand said all train services from Bangkok to southern Thailand were suspended after the tracks in Bangkok’s suburbs were submerged by floodwaters.

International charity Save the Children said it was concerned that crocodiles and snakes were lurking in stagnant floodwaters which are growing filthier by the day.

“There is a very real risk of waterborne or communicable diseases such as diarrhea and skin infections taking hold if families can’t maintain basic standards of hygiene,” a spokesman said.