Perilous
times and Climate Change
Floods kill hundreds in Southeast Asia
by Staff Writers
Bangkok (AFP) Oct 10, 2011
Four dead, five missing in Turkey floods
Ankara (AFP) Oct 10, 2011 - Flash floods and storms in southern
and western Turkey have killed four people and left five others
missing, Anatolia news agency reported on Monday.
Earlier the agency put the death toll at three.
Rescue teams found the body of a woman in a village in the coastal
Antalya province, a popular tourist destination, and five others
were reported missing, deputy governor Turan Eren told Anatolia.
He said rescue efforts were under way. Schools have been closed
across the province.
Floods also demolished three houses and three bridges in the
Haskiziloren village of southern Antalya province, Anatolia
reported.
Torrential rains also hit western Turkey, killing two people in
Denizli and Manisa provinces.
Anatolia said that in the village of Karabayir, located in the
southwestern Denizli province, a 60-year-old woman drowned while
trying to protect her cows from rising waters.
In the hamlet of Yanikdag, in the western province of Manisa, a
tornado devastated around 15 houses, including two which
collapsed, killing a 70-year-old man and his one-year-old
grandson, a local official, Davut Gordes, told Anatolia.
Massive floods have left 500 people dead across Thailand, Cambodia
and Vietnam, officials said Monday, as authorities stepped up
efforts to reach victims of the unusually heavy monsoon rains.
In Thailand, where the death toll from the country's worst floods
in decades rose to 269, thousands of soldiers fanned out across
affected areas as part of a huge aid operation.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who has described the
situation as a "serious crisis," said the kingdom had two days
before the arrival of the next tropical depression, but insisted
the situation was under control.
"It is not necessary to announce disaster zones because we still
can handle it," she told reporters, a day after postponing
official visits to Singapore and Malaysia to stay and monitor the
authorities' response.
She said new flood defences would be built in several locations in
the north and east of the capital.
In neighbouring Cambodia, the toll from the country's worst floods
in over a decade reached 207, including 83 children, a disaster
official there said. Vietnam has reported 24 deaths from flooding
in the Mekong Delta.
Vast swathes of rice paddy have been damaged or destroyed in
Southeast Asia as a result of the floods.
In Thailand the floods have damaged the homes or livelihoods of
millions of people, particularly farmers, across about three
quarters of the country's provinces.
Huge efforts are now under way to stop the waters from reaching
low-lying Bangkok, home to 12 million people, with prevention
measures including sandbags along the Chao Phraya river.
"We're confident that Bangkok is still in control. The situation
is normal," said Narong Jirasubkunakorn, a senior official at the
Bangkok Metropolitan Administration.
"We have 113 monitoring stations watching the overflow situation.
As of now, every station reported a normal level."
He said water was being allowed through the city's canals and
pumped out to sea to try to ease the situation in provinces north
of the capital that have been badly affected, with water several
metres deep in places.
In Thailand's ancient capital Ayutthaya, about 80 kilometres (50
miles) upriver of the capital, historic temples have been swamped
and a large industrial estate, home to a slew of Japanese
electronics and auto parts makers including car giant Honda, has
been flooded.
A large amount of run-off water is expected to reach Bangkok in
mid-October, while high tides will make it harder for the floods
to flow out to sea, but the authorities said they were confident
they could cope.
"The time we will have to watch carefully is the middle of the
month and around the end of the month when the sea level will be
high, but I think Bangkok will be just fine," said Narong