Bangkok still on alert as Thai floods continue

Soldiers, civil servants and families have been working frantically to add more than one million sandbags to Bangkok’s vulnerable northern flood defences after the city’s governor warned they were needed to keep waters from swamping the capital.

Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra said late on Monday that a 3.7 mile (6km) flood wall on the edge of the city’s suburbs was vulnerable to massive pools of run-off flowing down from the north, signalling the threat to the city was still grave.

Governor Paribatra’s call for city residents to act contrasted with government statements that the flood threat to Bangkok appeared to be easing.

At least 315 people have been killed in the worst flooding to hit Thailand in more than 50 years.

Channel 4 News Asia Correspondent John Sparks is in Thailand. He writes: “I spoke to a senior government official. He told me ‘the situation is critical’. He had seen the data, he said, but said the government didn’t want to release it for fear of ‘panicking people’. I think many here would rather be forewarned.”

Read more on John’s blog: The Thai flood situation is critical, so why not tell people?

Outside the capital, thousands of people remain displaced and hungry residents are struggling to survive in half-submerged towns.

Economic analysts say the floods have already reduced GDP projections for 2011 and could inflict around $6bn in damage, an amount that could double if floods swamp Bangkok.

At least six big industrial estates have now been halted by the floods, mostly in central Ayutthaya province. Officials had sent conflicting signals about the danger to the Nava Nakorn industrial estate north of Bangkok, which has 270 plants and about 270,000 workers, until the government told firms to halt operations on Monday as floodwater breached its walls.

Hiroshi Minami, head of the local unit of Japanese chip maker Rohm Co Ltd , said the government did not appear to have learnt from experience at other industrial estates.

“We needed early warning,” he told Reuters, adding Rohm customers around the world would suffer.

Monsoon downpours that began in July have inundated two-thirds of the country, and some areas remain under more than 6 feet (2m) of water that is unlikely to dissipate for weeks.

To the south of Thailand, flooding and landslides from heavy monsoon rains have killed 247 and affected 1.6 million people in Cambodia.

Other south east Asian countries, including the Philippines and Vietnam, have suffered serious flooding in recent weeks because of heavy monsoon rains.

Click on the image below to see a gallery of pictures from the Thailand floods.