From rustic streams to deadly rivers!
(Editorial credit: PhotobyTawat/Shutterstock.com)
The rainy season has started again in Thailand. Rob de Nijs sang “Softly the rain taps on the attic window” which sounds romantic, but I am increasingly experiencing that water can be a real danger.
Bangkok is a sinking city and last Wednesday evening it was seen that 16 cm of water per m2 is too much to keep the roads passable and, not unimportantly, many houses. It's nature, people with dry feet will think and for them this piece.
This week I saw on Thai Rath TV the drowning photos of a boy with Belgian blood. If it were a reader of this blog, I wish him a lot of strength with the processing of the grief and let's learn from actions.
Stubbornness is not strange to me and in the past it could sometimes lead to problems and not only for me but especially for others. Now that I'm a little older and see that drowning boy in front of me, I just realize how lucky we were in what we went through. A babbling river is not what it is.
My in-laws live on the Phanom River in Surat Thani. Every year it was an experience to see how much land this khlong had stolen from the family. That stealing is a natural process since a river itself determines the fastest way down. We humans often think that we are stronger than nature, but it came down to the fact that the neighbor across the street got extra land and the family got a little less. Someday it will be the other way around, but with 10 rai you don't look at a meter.
In September we came again for a family visit and I had to go down the river with a tube. Bought truck inner tubes and waited until it finally got sunny and the river flowed a little less aggressively.
Despite the warnings of the parents, it was time to lie on a tube and enjoy the sun. The group consisted of 7 people including a 2 year old child and so we descended nicely down the stream. Occasionally to the side as is also the case on a Belgian river.
However, suddenly out of nowhere everything was different.
A little further on it turned out that there was a storm in an area that had fed both the Phanom River and the Sok River while we were exactly at the point of confluence of both streams………the safety which was on the other side so walking upstream in the rising water already heavy and then hope that you came to the other side instead of in the swirling violence of the now river.
Fortunately, everyone has been able to tell the story, but since then I'm completely done with "try before you die"
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In the context of “try before you die”, taking selfies at a waterfall is not really recommended, sometimes with fatal results.
You have to give something for your digital scrapbook, although in some cases the outcome is very sad.
You did have your camera with you, didn't you? [wink]
Read a piece this week that it is mainly the waste of impatient citizens [thunder in the canal] by the way that it takes a little longer to drain that water in Bangkok.
The drainage problem in Bangkok is a bit more complicated than a lot of rain in a short time, slumping soil and litter, although all three are true.
During the major floods in 2011 (I was living in Bangkok at the time), the help of a Delft expert Verweij was called in, who tried to predict the course of the water, the amount and speed with a computer model. He needed the data from the Thais for the input. What turned out:
1. the klonge had an official depth of 2 meters but most of them were filled with 1,5 silt (lack of maintenance);
2. the locks that are everywhere no longer work due to rust (overdue maintenance);
3. the wells often do not work because they are clogged with street garbage (especially plastic; in some areas the streets are no longer swept because the private developer in the area has gone bankrupt, as was the case in my own neighborhood)
4. new roads are built without regard to the course of the water. The normal course of the water is blocked (no divers…forget!!)
Since 2011, 11 years have passed and there have been a few more missions to help the Thais with water management. In vain. No government has really taken it seriously.
https://www.dutchwatersector.com/news/dutch-experts-helped-thai-authorities-to-combat-bangkok-floods
It's true what you say, it could be better. Nevertheless, some large water drainage tunnels have been built in Bangkok since 2011. The Dutch experts have also said that sometimes so much rain can fall in a short time that no drainage system can handle it. In the past, even with many more khlongs, Bangkok was sometimes under water for weeks and that is no longer the case.
Seems a bit too fatalistic to me. Sometimes there is so much rain that we can do nothing about it.
But those Dutch experts also said that there should be a kind of Delta Plan with a large dam in the sea (to stop the water rising from the sea), more coordination between various government agencies, and a better warning system to which citizens can also contribute... …(take pictures of the water, send them centrally). Prevention is always better than cure.
Experts fear that – if nothing is done – Bangkok will again be flooded for months like before.
That plan to build a dam three kilometers off the coast and even thought of a road on it as far as Chonburi is already a few years old.
Rejected too expensive no need for nonsense wisecracking foreigners talk.
We shall see.
And reasonable and a drainage system that is as good as possible would make a big difference.
Unfortunately, many Thai people suffer from the MMI syndrome.
we'll see when the sea level rises.
you can try to drain the water but if it still comes back………
and too expensive…they also said the same about the Dutch Delta Plan
and for the sake of convenience one does not count the costs with the constant flooding of areas, the damage to houses and property.
Bangkok under water for a few months is of course an unmitigated economic disaster.
A natural drainage system only works as long as the place where you want the water to go is lower than where it should come from.
By pumping up the groundwater under Bangkok, the bottom sinks (if you remove something, water in this case, what's above sinks, because it wants to fill that space)
If the streets of Bangkok fall below sea level, there will be no natural runoff.
Then it becomes 'sink or sink', just like a leak in a ship.
However, I don't know how far Bangkok is above or below sea level.
If Thailand wants to keep Bangkok, that dam will probably have to be the answer, along with - if possible - stopping the pumping of groundwater under Bangkok.
Personally, giving up Bangkok seems to me the simplest solution, if there is higher ground not too far away and expand Bangkok in that direction and flood the rest.
Bangkok is on average two meters above sea level, according to my information, it could be wrong of course.
A dam with locks will also become brackish water, I think, and stop the bandwidth of ebb and flow.
For the rest, these are also processes that really do not take place in decades.
Bangkok 'give up' along the coast, areas will be flooded gently, but certainly true.
Go to cities Nakhon Ratchasima in other words Korat is already noticeable.
If the dam is in the sea, the enclosed area will probably contain 'fresh' water from the river.
Possibly that water can also be used as a drinking water supply, because then the river water does not disappear into the sea.
I think that river water must be reasonably clean.
Bangkok now has a governor (elected with more than 50% of the votes cast) who seems to be paying serious attention to it. He even got the military to help clear the drainage ways. Do they finally do something useful for society?
To continue on the involuntary white water rafting by Johnny and company:
I too, and I think many of us, took risks, especially in my younger years, of which I (much) later thought I was (very) lucky to be alive.
Rivers open sewers
I have been to chantanaburie in june.
On a raft pulled by a motorboat.
At one point they put the bamboo rafts in a square.
We were then allowed to swim with a life jacket on.
I am a water rat gratefully used this opportunity.
Three days later at home suffering from pain in the right ear.
After a doctor's examination, a bacterial and parasite infection was diagnosed.
You will never get me in a river open sewer in Thailand.
Water drainage roads / sewer is important that proper maintenance is done there, that is certainly true,
But sometimes it cannot be stopped by heavy rainfall such as 2021, such as in 2021 where many deaths have occurred in Germany, Belgium and ziid limburg….
One thing is certain humanity is very technical and clever but nature will always prevail no matter what humanity will do.
Also read this this morning in Asean Now.
Also read that the Netherlands is concerned with flooding.
In 2004 a pump house was made with the largest pump in the world. OK correction we have two
https://pressurewashr.com/the-worlds-most-powerful-water-pump/
The Pentair Fairbanks Nijhuis HP1-4000.340 has a capacity of 60 m3/second (60,000 litres/second). To crank this much water per second, it offers a horsepower of 5,364. 40000 kW !
In Guine's book of world records! tadaaa
Had to search in English, otherwise I would never have found the largest pump. Absurd, because then I only get to see large pumpkins, Dutch search.
Perhaps something for Thailand, pumping from the Ping and moving to the Mekong. Well, it is a distance of 500 km