BANGKOK — The Thai government sent its only aircraft carrier to rescue stranded residents and tourists on Thursday after unseasonable storms inundated six southern provinces and offshore islands, killing at least 17 people and stranding thousands more.
Torrential rains, floods, mudslides and rough seas swamped seaside villages in the past week and trapped local and foreign tourists on islands in the region, a prime resort area. One official said that about a million people had been affected.
Until the rains began to ease Thursday, storms and rising waters had forced the closing of three airports and cut off road and rail links in the region. Islands in the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea were inaccessible as ferries were canceled.
Flights were resuming at airports on Thursday, and the weather bureau forecast that the rain would stop this weekend. Flights to the island of Koh Samui were reported to be operating normally and clearing up a backlog of stranded passengers.
The government reported that the aircraft carrier had rescued about 800 people on Thursday, more than half of them foreigners, from the islands of Koh Tao and Koh Phangan.
“There are roughly one million people affected in many provinces,” Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said Wednesday. “At first we thought the flood would last a day or two, but now it has already been one week.”
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva visited the region on Wednesday morning and said that the bad weather could not have been predicted.
“If you ask people who are familiar, they would tell you they never expected this could happen,” he said. “We cannot use the past experience as a guideline because many things have changed. Therefore, I’d like everyone to think of safety first in the risky areas, and we will facilitate the evacuation in the necessary areas.”
Although the weather is unseasonable, floods and droughts are not uncommon inThailand. Heavy flooding across the country late last year left more than 220 people dead and damaged the homes or livelihoods of an estimated 8.6 million people in 51 of the country’s 76 provinces.
The toll of death and damage from the storms appeared likely to rise as rescuers reached the hardest-hit areas and dug through the debris. The Thai Navy said more ships were heading to isolated islands in the Gulf of Thailand.
The Nation newspaper reported Thursday that a landslide had swallowed up an entire village of about 100 households on Wednesday in the Khao Phanom district of Krabi Province, leaving 10 people dead and many missing.
It quoted radio bulletins as estimating that 100 villagers had disappeared. Rescue efforts were blocked by currents and debris; electricity, running water and telephone services were cut off.
One Canadian traveler who escaped Koh Phangan before it was cut off March 24 described a terrifying journey by boat through rain and heavy waves to Koh Samui during which passengers were crying and one crew member began to pray.
“He put his arms in the prayer position and closed his eyes, and he had his hands pressed together up against his forehead,” said the traveler, Marion Young, a massage therapist from Victoria, British Columbia. “That’s when I knew it was probably pretty bad.”
She arrived, soaked but safe, after an hour’s crossing. But many others on the island remained stranded for several days.
(source:nytimes.com)
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