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Thailand Flooding Death Toll 'Tops 500'
The number of people killed by months of flooding in northern Thailand has risen to more than 500, officials say.
A Thai boy swims near a mall along flooded streets in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, Nov. 6, 2011. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila) Three months of heavy rain have affected about a third of Thailand's province, destroying farmland and forcing tens of thousands from their homes.
Large parts of the capital Bangkok are also flooded and there are fears the city centre could yet be worse hit.
The government has announced a 100bn baht ($4bn: £2.5bn) recovery plan.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said the money would be used to rebuild homes and businesses and restore the economy, which has been badly affected.
"The work must be completed in 45 days because people have suffered for so long already," the Bangkok Post quoted Ms Yingluck as saying.
She asked for public understanding as the government tackles the disaster, saying: "I admit that this task has really exhausted me, but I will never give up."
The authorities have come under criticism for what is perceived as a slow response to the flooding, and for giving conflicting advice about evacuations.
The waters are now receding in the north of the country but Department of Prevention and Mitigation said on Sunday that 506 people were now known to have died since July.
The BBC's Rachel Harvey in Bangkok says doubts are growing again about whether the authorities will be able to protect the capital.
The city, which is criss-crossed by rivers and canals, has been threatened by encroaching water for weeks as the floods drain towards the sea.
Nobody has died in the capital, but a fifth of the city is now under water and tens of thousands of residents of eight of the 50 districts have been told to leave their homes.
Rows between the government and the Bangkok administration about how to handle the crisis have undermined public confidence in their efforts, says our correspondent.
On Saturday, Bangkok governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra warned that the city authorities would throw out the central government's flood management plan and bring in their own unless co-operation between the two agencies improved, the Bangkok Post reports.
There are growing concerns about the health problems of large amounts of polluted water - which is up to chest height in some areas - flowing through the densely populated city.
Airport flooded
The waters have now reached the Chatuchak market, a major outdoor shopping centre and tourist attraction north of the business district.
Many of the thousands of storeholders have followed official advice and temporarily shut up shop.
"There will be no-one able to come around to sell and to buy. So, doesn't make sense to keep the market open," Tinnakorn Rujinarong, deputy director of the market, told the Reuters news agency.
But others have refused to close, saying they could not risk losing what trade there was.
"When tourists come here to find this place closed down for too long, they will not come back again. And it will take a long time to bring the market back to booming again," said one food stall trader.
The city's second airport, Don Muang, is under water but the main international airport at Suvarnabhumi and the city's transport system are still operating.
Emergency workers are continuing to distribute sandbags and attempting to divert the water through canals.
However some residents on the edges of Bangkok have accused the authorities of sacrificing their homes to save the commercial centre.
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6 Comments so far
Show AllThis world is insane!
While millions die from weather related events, millions more die from the murderous regimes of this world.
I often imagine aliens watching us and scratching their heads at how stupid mankind is.
What a wasted 2,000 years.
Imagine where this world could be if it hadn't been so warmongerring.
>>joecool9: "What a wasted 2,000 years. Imagine where this world could be if it hadn't been so warmongerring."<<
Forget the last 2000 years! Just take the last 20 years when things were MUCH clearer and the science was MUCH clearer on so many subjects! With the Cold War gone, there was a great opportunity for the western world to move towards a less wasteful, less destructive, less predatory way of life.
The "Kyoto Protocol" was signed by pretty much ALL the countries in 1997 and climate change was recognized by ALL the countries as an urgent threat. The Rio 'Earth Summit' took place in 1992 and everyone who participated knew that there were some serious problems on hand. And yet, what do the neocons do? They wanted to use this "opportunity" for world dominance. I single out the neocons because that has been the single most destructive ideology in recent times. And I would list Bill Clinton as a neocon and the continued bombing of Iraq (especially its air defense) and the inhumane sanctions during the 1990s as paving the way for the escalation that followed under GWB.
The American public too should share MUCH of the blame for being so mindlessly distracted by all kinds of trivial things in the 1990s, gloating in their sole superpower status. The media made sure that the public would NOT hear of climate change or the Kyoto treaty until several years later, and by that time the denial industry was in overdrive. So the denialist propaganda had become far more powerful than the feeble messages from the scientists.
I mention the American public because the USA is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and is among the handful of nations that have NOT ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012! Under this treaty, the rich countries, responsible for much of the CO2 emissions in the last 200 years were expected to make modest cuts in their emissions, and in the next round, all countries were to be brought on board. But because the USA refused to commit to even the most modest of cuts, other countries are much less willing to make any binding commitments. And for many, many years, the US public was blissfully ignorant of this whole subject until they heard it from the denial industry why it was all a big hoax. And there is a "culture" of contempt towards international treaties that contributed in no small measure to the sabotaging of the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto treaty itself had the most modest of goals, but it was understood as only the first step in addressing climate change while the science was still being firmed up, as of 1997. But sabotaging even this most modest of commitment made sure that there would be no such binding treaties subsequently, as was seen at Copenhagen in 2009 and at Cancun in 2010. And now comes the next big meeting at Durban, and I am not holding out much hope.
Thinking about the wasted opportunities in the last 20 years should bother any thinking person with the most rudimentary intelligence and conscience.
This is crisis going on for months on end, and I can only try to imagine what life must be like for so many people there. This is a time when the rest of the world should be stepping up to provide assistance, since the rest of the world relies on so much from Thailand - such as rice and electronics and computer parts. But too bad that the rest of the world has its own problems. I hope that those Thai people who are not much affected by the floods and the rain and who are better off step in and share some of their wealth with those affected.
i live in deep south texas. i stepped outside earlier and caught sight of a male cardinal perched on my son's car. an interesting holiday card, huh? imagine a parrot and a cardinal cuddled in a palm tree. wow! climate change!
Interesting post about the cardinal, and the parrot, hummingbird :)
Mother Nature is coming and BOY is She pissed!