Thailand shifts gear in evacuation efforts as floods ease; death toll climbs in Indonesia

HAY YAI, Thailand/KUALA PERLIS, Malaysia – Flood rescue teams in Thailand readied drones to deliver aid on Nov 27, and helicopters dropped supplies to people marooned on rooftops, as the death toll from its worst floods in years rose and the number killed by a cyclone in Indonesia climbed to 61.

Thailand’s government said 55 people died during severe floods from a week of heavy rain that had devastated nine southern provinces, while on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, rescue teams battled to reach communities cut off by landslides and floods that wreaked chaos in three provinces.

Thailand pushed relief efforts into higher gear after the military brought in an aircraft carrier, 20 helicopters and convoys of trucks to deliver food, medicine and dinghies, and issued a public appeal for boats and jet skis to reach people stranded for days by waters up to 2m high.

Floodwaters had receded on Nov 27 in Thailand’s worst-hit city of Hat Yai, and the authorities were optimistic that access could increase and allow basic services to be restored. “Efforts to assist the public are continuing, but the flooding situation will be a long fight,” Thai government spokesman Siripong Angkasakulkiat said.

Nearly three million people have been affected by floods in southern Thailand, with thousands of people huddling in evacuation centres, while in neighbouring Malaysia, flooding in seven states killed two people and forced more than 34,000 into shelters.

Tropical cyclone devastates Indonesian province

On Sumatra, an Indonesian island of 60 million people, a

tropical cyclone unleashed floods and landslides. A

t least 100 people are missing, with power outages and damaged infrastructure hampering rescue efforts.

Kompas TV showed images of earth sliding down a hillside to pile up in front of homes, while gushing waters higher than 1m swept along debris and the branches of trees. People were carried out of their homes through fast-flowing water and helped onto orange rubber boats in the teeming rain, video from the search and rescue agency showed.

Verified images from West Sumatra showed rescue teams carrying bodies through deep mud, and cars displaced and on top of one another after being carried away by a tide of floodwater.

Meteorologists say current extremes of weather in South-east Asia could stem from the interaction of two active systems, Typhoon Koto in the Philippines and the unusual formation of Cyclone Senyar in the Malacca Strait.

Global warming can bring more frequent extreme events as higher sea surface temperatures supercharge tropical storms.

The most recent floods follow a series of deadly typhoons and heavy monsoon rain that have lashed the Philippines and Vietnam and swelled floods elsewhere.

Army reinforcement arrive

Thailand’s army engineering corps, with specialist vehicles and 2,000 members of the civil defence corps, arrived on Nov 27 in Hat Yai, the fifth-largest city, where helicopters were delivering food to hospitals and victims still stuck on rooftops.

In Hat Yai, thousands have been stranded by the record rainfall. The 335mm recorded on Nov 21 was the city’s

highest in a single day for 300 years

.

Aerial footage under grey skies over Hat Yai showed roads engulfed by brown water, with heavy-duty lorries crawling along wide thoroughfares past abandoned cars and lorries, as groups of people waded slowly through knee-deep water.

“I’m walking back to my grandmother because she hadn’t had food for two or three days,” said Ms Natawat Chermmontri, 18. “I heard she finally received some food, but I’m still worried.”

Tropical storm warning

Waters were receding in Malaysia, where the authorities issued new warnings on Nov 27 of a tropical storm until the weekend, with strong winds, rough seas and heavy, continuous rain affecting seven states.

Container lorries were used to bring some Malaysians back over the border from Thailand, the Foreign Minister said on Nov 27, as smaller vehicles were unable to traverse the floodwaters. The authorities said about 500 nationals were still stranded in Hat Yai, a city popular with Malaysian tourists.

At an evacuation centre in the state of Perlis, Ms Gon Qasim said rising waters trapped her in her home in the middle of a paddy field. “The water was like the ocean,” the 73-year-old evacuee said.

In Thailand, police said they were helping 1,000 stranded foreigners, moving them to shelters at a university. At an indoor basketball arena that was turned into an evacuation centre, a tearful Mr Kritchawat Sothiananthakul, 70, described the inexorable rise of waters in his Hat Yai home as he waited with his dog to be rescued.

“We had to climb down from the roof, get into the boat,” he said. “I needed to carry it and then get onto a truck... We had to leave everything because everything was submerged.” REUTERS